Finn 2005 Getting a PhD

Getting a PhD

Compared to their previous experiences, new PhD students face very different challenges and responsibilities, require different skills andmust achieve higher standards of performance. Where do researchstudents get such information?

This book provides guidance that will help research students avoidneedless mistakes and address the demands of their PhD research projectwith confidence. It informs and advises research students on many of theimportant facets of postgraduate research, including:

• explaining what it means to conduct research at doctoral level;• the doctoral requirements for independence, contribution to

knowledge, originality and suitability for publication;• getting the most from your supervisor;• planning a research project;• conducting a literature review;• writing the thesis;• publishing your research;• criteria used in the PhD examination.

Each chapter contains reference to selected reading and online resources,and there are numerous exercises that encourage you to consider how thecontent applies to your research project.

Getting a PhD is an essential handbook for PhD students, and willprovide plenty of valuable advice for Master’s students or undergraduatesconducting a research project.

John A. Finn is Research Officer at Teagasc, Ireland, where he managesresearch projects and supervises PhD students. He is also VisitingResearcher at University College Dublin.

Getting a PhD

An action plan to help manageyour research, your supervisorand your project

John A. Finn

First published 2005 by Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

© 2005 John A. Finn

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission inwriting from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

ISBN 0–415–34498–0 (pbk)ISBN 0–415–34497–2 (hbk)

ISBN 0-203-02345-5 Master e-book ISBN

This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’scollection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

To my parents, for the educational opportunitiesthat they gave me, and to Linda, Gearóid and Aisling

Contents

List of illustrations ixAcknowledgements xi

Introduction 1

1 The PhD research degree 7

2 You and your supervisor 32

3 Project management 53

4 The literature review 89

5 Writing the thesis 105

6 Publishing your research 137

7 The PhD examination process 157

Appendix 1 Originality 180

Appendix 2 Answers to exercises 182

References 184Index 188

List of illustrations

Figures

2.1 Proportional relevance of thesis to student and supervisor 413.1 Phases of research projects 573.2 Make your PhD project more manageable by identifying

the specific accomplishments and deliverables 683.3 A template of a time budget to estimate the amount of

time required to conduct some of the major tasks in a doctoral project 72

3.4 Typical stages of a PhD project 753.5 Adaptive management includes decision-making to

consider changes to research projects 763.6 Schedule of specific research tasks (Gannt chart) 804.1 Relationship diagram to represent the aims of a literature

review 954.2 Flow diagram of the nitrogen cycle (simple form) 964.3 Flow diagram of the nitrogen cycle (complex form) 96

Tables

3.1 Terminology associated with project management 563.2 Description of activities that typically occur during a PhD

project, and how they correspond to project management practices in different phases of a typical PhD project 58

3.3 Example of an outline plan for the first year of a doctoral research project 78

Acknowledgements

My decision to write this book was partly inspired by my interactions withJulian Park and Anne Crook during the following projects: ‘Guidancefor Students Projects’ (GSP, http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/hosted/GSP/) and‘Scientific Training by Assignment for Research Students’ (STARS,http://www.ucc.ie/research/stars/). In addition to collaborating withAnne and Julian on the above projects, I am also very grateful for theirenthusiastic discussion on many aspects of undergraduate and post-graduate research training, PhD supervision and for insightful feedbackon this manuscript.

I am most fortunate to have benefited from the co-operation andassistance from a number of people. I am particularly grateful to AlanKelly for his careful reading of several drafts of this book and supportduring the writing process. In addition to generously providing me withthe benefit of his feedback and insights, he specifically suggested Figure2.1 and initially discussed what evolved to be the description of adaptivemanagement in Chapter 3. I have thoroughly enjoyed our discussions,which provided much-needed motivation on several occasions.

John Connolly and Paul Giller provided useful discussion andfeedback, and I thank Joy Collier, Mark Fellowes, Con O’Rourke andMary Smiddy for comments. The research staff and students at Teagascprovided valuable feedback, comments and support on many occasions,particularly Owen Carton, Donnacha Doody, Ed Dunne, Deirdre Fay,Liam Gaul, Kirsty Hooker, Fionn Horgan, Isabelle Kurz, Kay O’Connell,Norma O’Hea, Karl Richards, Rogier Schulte and Helen Sheridan.

I am grateful to Philip Mudd of Routledge and to many other colleagueswho agreed that there was a need for a book such as this one.

For permissions and other assistance, I am grateful to the following:Vernon Trafford and Shosh Leshem kindly provided their list of questionsin Chapter 7 and Tyrrell Burgess Associates provided permission to

reproduce this list from Higher Education Review; Michael Talbot gener-ously agreed to the use of material from his lecture ‘Aspects of scholarlyresearch: originality in scholarly writing’; Lynne Baldwin and TomasRoslin for permission to reproduce extracts from referee’s reports writtenby them (Chapter 6); the Dean of Postgraduate Studies, James CookUniversity, Australia, for permission to refer to their Handbook forResearch Higher Degree Students; Ingrid Lunt at the Institute of Education,University of London, for permission to reproduce their criteria forexamining the PhD (Chapter 7); Ellen Pearce of the UK GRAD Pro-gramme for permission to reproduce the Joint Skills Statement (Chapter1), which was jointly developed by the UK Research Councils, Arts andHumanities Research Board and UK GRAD programme, and DavidStannard and Richard Ellis of The University of Reading for providingand permitting use of their Code of Practice on Research Students.

Finally, I would like to thank my family, Linda Moloney, Gearóid Finnand Aisling Finn for their support and patience, without which I couldnot have completed this work.

John FinnJuly 2004

xii Acknowledgements

Introduction

The aim of this book

In many cases, the only difference between a new PhD student and a final year undergraduate student is a three-month summer break. Yet,compared to undergraduate students, PhD students face very differentchallenges and responsibilities, different skills requirements and higherstandards of performance. No one is born knowing these things – sowhere do research students find such information?

Many institutions and supervisors provide excellent induction, supportand training for research students; sadly, many do not. Even then, mosttraining efforts tend to focus on research methods. Therefore, in manycases, it seems that students find their information (and misinformation)about strategically important issues in their doctoral project via what may be described as a form of social osmosis that derives from otherresearch students, supervisors, research staff, and a variety of fragmentedsources!

Experience is a valuable teacher, and an important view of the doctoral research project is that it is an opportunity to learn the craft ofresearch, which relies strongly on learning by doing, and sometimesinvolves learning from mistakes. I agree with this view; some mistakesoffer a very rewarding learning experience and are an important elementof research training and practice. Nevertheless, other mistakes offer aminor learning experience and, too often, research students receive hardlessons from needless mistakes that could easily be avoided. For the sakeof a lack of a little relevant information, these needless mistakes arerepeated anew by successive cohorts of research students. In addition tobeing intensely frustrating, this is also a costly learning process in termsof finance, time and research quality.

This book aims to provide information that will help avoid some of these needless mistakes. It also aims to inform and advise researchstudents on many of the important facets of postgraduate research. Theseinclude, for example: a clear understanding of what it means to conductresearch at doctoral level; an awareness of the importance of conceptualdevelopment and critical evaluation; the ability to plan a research projectover a substantial period of time (which requires strategic thinking anddetailed planning); responsible research practice; the effectivecommunication of your research in the written thesis and publishedpapers, and the criteria used in the examination for the PhD degree. Tothis end, the book provides an overview of the terrain, and although thereis no substitute for exploring it yourself, you should be guided away fromdangers and pitfalls and toward more traversable ground.

This book is written primarily for research students pursuing a PhDdegree; however, with minor alteration in interpretation, the vastmajority of the content is also applicable to students pursuing a Master’sdegree and to undergraduate students conducting a final-year researchproject.

The PhD degree – variation in implementation

The ‘typical’ PhD student is registered for a full-time course of at leastnine academic terms (three years) during which they pursue originalresearch under the guidance of at least one research supervisor who is a member of staff at a university. The research is evaluated on the basisof a written thesis that is about 60,000 to 80,000 words long and an oral examination. This description, of course, ignores the huge variety ofother circumstances that are found. For example, PhD students may bepart-time and/or non-national; new PhD students may be progressingdirectly from an undergraduate degree or may be mature professionalswith considerable experience; a supervisor may have little or a lot ofexperience in either student supervision or research; there may be an oral examination, there may not. Different countries, and differentuniversities within a single country, also have different approaches to thePhD. As an example, many universities in the United States have a PhDprogramme that begins with a period (about two years) of taught coursesand research training, which is followed by about two years of originalresearch. Traditional PhD programmes in many other countries consistof a three-year programme of research that corresponds closely to theabove ‘typical’ scenario. Even then, universities are increasingly adopting

2 Introduction

a preparatory year of taught classes, followed by a three-year PhD, the so-called ‘1+3’ approach.

Thus, one of the difficulties in providing guidance for PhD students isthe differences in local interpretation and application of regulationspertaining to the PhD degree. Throughout the book, therefore, I repeat-edly advise that you consult with your supervisor (or otherwise find out)about the compatibility of the general advice in this book with thespecific situation in your university.

The PhD degree – similarity in purpose

Given the considerable variation across institutional approaches to the PhD, it would be a worrying prospect if institutions had uniquedefinitions and expectations from the PhD degree. Happily, this is notthe case. The PhD degree, as defined by institutions and as experiencedby research students, is generally underpinned by remarkably similarguiding principles and operational approaches. As a result, one canidentify research experiences and issues that are widely shared by PhDstudents (e.g. see Table 3.2), which both justify and facilitate the for-mulation of general guidance. This book, therefore, is structured aroundimportant elements of the research process as experienced by doctoralresearch students; although the product of their research differs signifi-cantly across different research disciplines, the research process has manyshared activities (see Chapter 1).

Outline of the book

Research students encounter different challenges as they progress throughtheir research degree. The book is structured so that the earlier chaptersare more relevant to postgraduate students who have just begun theirresearch, whereas the later chapters are more appropriate to students whoare nearing completion. Nevertheless, I would advise students at thebeginning of their research degree to at least skim through the wholebook so that you are aware of the content and can consult the appropriatesections in more detail as your research progresses.

Chapter 1 provides some indication of what to expect when doing aPhD, and focuses on the expected standard from doctoral research. Anawareness of such issues is crucial if the doctoral thesis is to meet therequired level of quality when it is examined. The chapter finishes withan overview of the educational benefits of a PhD degree, including a

Introduction 3

description of the range of skills that you will learn and implement duringyour doctoral project.

The relationship between students and their supervisor is a definingfeature of the doctoral experience. Chapter 2 discusses the duties andresponsibilities that supervisors should undertake; similarly, the dutiesand responsibilities of the PhD student are described. The chapterprovides guidance on how to maximise the benefit of the finite amountof time that your supervisor can devote to your project. Some commonproblems associated with research supervision are discussed, along withsome preventative and ameliorative strategies.

Project management is increasingly being recognised and adopted asa practical approach to help PhD students to manage their project.Chapter 3 introduces the principles of project management that are mostrelevant to PhD students, and focuses on different issues to be addressedwhen planning, scheduling and implementing your doctoral project.Specific examples are provided, and there is a consideration of the roleof project management in facilitating the process of discovery thatunderpins original research.

Chapter 4 focuses on the aim of the literature review to provide acritical evaluation of a body of knowledge (an important requirement ofthe PhD thesis), and describes a number of strategies and examples.Chapter 5 discusses the process of writing and the importance of writingas a method that not just assists, but is part of your thinking, learning and understanding of your research subject. The written thesis mustaddress the examiners’ expectations of it, and this chapter suggests severalstrategies for doing so, along with relevant examples.

Chapter 6 gives an overview of the process that is typically involvedwhen publishing your research in a journal. For example, it addresses thepros and cons of publishing during your PhD project, and discussesentitlement to authorship. The peer review process is described and thereare examples of the issues that journal referees identify in their reportson submitted manuscripts.

Chapter 7 discusses the examination for the award of PhD degree,which is comprised of the examination of the thesis and the oralexamination. Examples are provided of the criteria that are used in theexamination of the PhD. The chapter concludes with a consideration ofhow PhD graduates may expect their skills to translate into professionalpractice in their future career.

Although this book aims to cover some of the common researchprocesses that PhD students implement and issues that they encounter,it does not, and could not, cover all of them. A (very) much larger book

4 Introduction

would probably include a discussion of the principles of research design,statistical analyses, presentation of research findings (orally or by poster),financial issues, the added challenges of being registered part-time or studying abroad, the use of computer software, intellectual propertyrights, and so on. I certainly do not consider such issues to be unim-portant. However, I believe that the treatment of strategic researchprocesses dealt with in this book will enable you to deal with other suchissues in two ways. First, through being more aware of your responsibil-ity and ability to manage your research project and your professionaldevelopment, you will more quickly recognise an ‘issue’ when it arises.For new PhD students, this is often a problem – they are simply so newto the postgraduate research culture that they are unable to recognisewhich issues affect them. Second, having identified an issue, you will bemore aware of the various sources of help and assistance. Remember, noone is born knowing these things. Locate and read the information that canhelp you, and don’t be afraid to ask your supervisors and fellow researchstudents for guidance.

Throughout the book, relevant examples are used to illustrate various points. The subject matter of the examples is intended to reflecta variety of disciplines across the sciences, social sciences and humanities.The examples should be easily understood, and the research principlesbeing illustrated should be applicable across many disciplines. There are also a number of Exercises that encourage you to engage with theissues on a more personal level, and provide an opportunity to reflect on how the content of a chapter or section applies to your specificresearch project. These exercises may be challenging or time-consumingto varying degrees, but they should provoke you to evaluate yourunderstanding of what it means to undertake research that attains adoctoral standard. The relatively modest effort to conduct these exerciseswill be well worth it.

Each of the chapters in the book concludes with a selection ofrecommended publications and online resources that direct you to furtherreading. The selected reading is not intended to be exhaustive; however,the examples provided have been selected for their relevance andreadability. At the time of writing, all website addresses were workingcorrectly. However, website addresses are notoriously ephemeral asmaterial is removed or, more often, the web address is changed. I providethe full title of the online resource, so that if the web address changes,the material may be found again by entering the title into a search engine.

Finally, please note that none of the content in the book overridesthe institutional rules and regulations of the university where you are

Introduction 5

registered. While there is no substitute for real-world experience, researchstudents can learn to better anticipate and prepare for the challenges andproblems that inevitably arise during research projects. My hope is thatthis book can help the learning experience of research students, therebyimproving the quality of their research training, research output andcareer development.

6 Introduction

Chapter 1

The PhD research degree

Introduction

Being a PhD student is considerably different from the experience ofbeing an undergraduate student. Undergraduate education is character-ised by a reasonably well-defined curriculum for which taught classes arelargely controlled or facilitated by a lecturer. The curriculum tends tofocus on well-established knowledge that is the product of a researchdiscipline. Handouts are provided, textbooks are recommended, and youare one of a group of peers participating in the same course and sharingmany of the same experiences. There are several stages of assessment, andpast exam papers are available that serve as a clear guide to the expectedstandard.

In contrast, there is no curriculum for the PhD: in effect, you designthe curriculum for your PhD project (with assistance from yoursupervisor). As well as mastering the generally accepted knowledge of a research discipline, the need to undertake original research requiresdoctoral students to master the development and understanding ofuncertain knowledge. A major feature of doctoral research is thisengagement with the development of new knowledge, as well as theevaluation of uncertain and tentative knowledge.

Given that new students will be inexperienced and unaware of the nature of the PhD research degree, this chapter provides guidance on some important issues. I briefly discuss the main purpose of the PhD and relatively common issues that arise for students doing a PhD.Considerable attention is given to the standards associated with doc-toral research and the requirement for doctoral research to display‘independence’, ‘contribution to knowledge’, ‘originality’, and ‘suitabilityfor publication’. A final section discusses the educational benefits of doinga PhD, and how these may be expected to contribute to your professionaldevelopment.

The nature of the PhD: an overview

The implicit expectation of a PhD degree is that the doctoral graduateis capable of independently conducting original research of a standard that is expected of professional researchers in their particular discipline.The requirement for originality and the ability to work independentlymake your PhD ‘curriculum’ a very personal and distinct entity; becauseof this, there can be considerable uncertainty involved as you prepare,create, focus and plan your PhD programme. However, the ability to copewith uncertainty at a personal level, and to resolve uncertainty in thedesign and interpretation of original research is part of becoming anindependent researcher. In time, you will appreciate that the enjoymentand satisfaction derived from research are intimately associated with suchefforts to identify, understand and investigate uncertainty.

Phillips and Pugh (1994: 19) discuss the nature of the PhD degree andplace considerable emphasis on the doctorate as recognition that theholder is a fully professional researcher, meaning that they can do thefollowing:

• Can produce research that is of interest to other professionalresearchers.

• Have a command of the subject to the extent that they can evaluatethe work of other researchers.

• Are astute enough to identify where they can make a usefulcontribution.

• Are able to communicate their results at a level that is appropriateto an audience of professional researchers.

The ultimate aim of the award of a PhD degree, therefore, is a recognitionof both your ability and status as an independent researcher, and yourlearning and implementation of high-level skills. Indeed, a strongimplication of the emphasis on becoming a professional researcher is thatthe process of the PhD (learning and practice of high-level research skills)is at least as important as the product of the PhD (the research findingsin the thesis). This distinction between the research training process of the PhD and the research product of the PhD is important: you needto maintain your focus on not just producing a specific piece of original,high-quality research, but also on your training and learning to be aresearcher who is more generally capable of conducting original, high-quality research:

8 The PhD research degree

You are not doing some research for its own sake; you are doing it inorder to demonstrate that you are a fully professional researcher, witha good grasp of what is happening in your field and capable ofevaluating the impact of new contributions to it – your own as wellas others’. That is what you get the doctorate for.

(Phillips and Pugh 1994: 60)

New PhD students commonly consider – mistakenly – the PhD to be a single great piece of work that makes a major contribution to theresearch discipline. Unfortunately, this perspective over-estimates whatis required. In contrast, experienced researchers and supervisors placeconsiderable emphasis on the doctoral research project being bothmanageable and achievable (see Chapter 3):

[T]here are two views of the PhD: a perfect small-scale piece ofresearch study, or a worthwhile learning experience. There is a thirdview which students often begin with and have to be talked out of: it is a topic or a problem so complex and enormous that it wouldtake a lifetime’s work to complete.

(Lawton 1997: 8)

Supervisors are aware that it is adequate for a thesis to make anincremental contribution to knowledge and understanding – a PhDdoes not have to inspire a revolution in thinking about a researchdiscipline. As one examiner put it, ‘ . . . A PhD is three years of solidwork, not a Nobel Prize.’

(quoted in Mullins and Kiley 2002: 386)

Although Lawton (1997) distinguishes between the PhD as ‘a perfectsmall-scale piece of research study, or a worthwhile learning experience’,these two views are not mutually exclusive. Again, new students oftenunder-estimate this view of the PhD as a learning experience; however,it is inevitable that you will have to learn and implement a variety of newskills, especially during the first year. As a personal example, most of thefirst year of my PhD was spent attempting to investigate the toxic effectsof agricultural chemicals on beetles, however, an account of these initialexperiments never appeared in my thesis. I lacked confidence in theresearch methods that I had originally used, largely due to the method-ological insights gained later in my doctoral research. Back then, I deeplyresented the time that I had apparently ‘wasted’ on that work, but now

The PhD research degree 9

appreciate that the experience and insight provided by the first year ofmy research prepared me to properly investigate my research questionsin the second and third years.

Features of being a PhD research student

One of the major challenges when doing a PhD is that you are respon-sible for managing your progress. This cannot be over-emphasised.Throughout the PhD, there will be important decisions to be made. Thus,many elements of the PhD programme require your exercise of judge-ment on big issues (Which research questions should I focus on? Whatis my evaluation of others’ research? What research methods should I choose? What assumptions am I making in my choice of researchmethods?) and on smaller ones (Where do I seek permission to use thispiece of equipment? Who should attend this meeting?). Although yourexercise of judgement may be challenging and demanding at times, it isalso empowering, and is a hallmark of your development as an inde-pendent researcher. Of course, this is not to say that you will work incomplete isolation with little or no assistance; you will have (and areentitled to) support and guidance from your supervisor and others.Ultimately, however, achieving the award of PhD degree is your respon-sibility.

One implication of such responsibility is that your motivation forundertaking a research degree is essential for your success. You will needto persevere through sometimes tedious and repetitive work and at othertimes some very challenging and difficult periods of study. Unfortunately,over a relatively long research period, it is also likely that you willexperience some form of personal crisis, such as relationship problems,or an illness or death in the family. It may be difficult to sustain yourselfthrough such academic and personal challenges for the duration of thePhD unless you are highly motivated and focused.

Cryer (2000: 12) indicates the following motivations that are likelyto bring success:

• developing a trained mind;• satisfying intellectual curiosity;• finding a challenge when one feels ‘in a rut’;• experiencing and engaging with an academic community;• contributing to knowledge;• fulfilling a lifelong ambition.


Despite (or maybe because of) the challenges, successful PhD studentsgenerally enjoy doing research and derive considerable satisfaction and reward from undertaking a doctoral research degree. They engagetotally with their research topic, enjoy reading about it, and relish theopportunity to make their own contribution. To get through the difficultperiods that inevitably arise, it is important that you are genuinelyinterested in the topic in which you will specialise for a number of years,and for which you will make many personal sacrifices:

Be absolutely sure you love your field enough to give up time, money,effort, and sweat . . . If you’re not 100% certain, then do somethingelse for a while. It’s a wonderful, exhilarating, horrible, frustratingprocess; you’ll be poor for years, you’ll work like a dog, your advisorwill probably kick your ego around a bit, so if you’re not passionateabout your field you’ll probably have a hard time. On the other hand,it can be a great experience. I’m glad I did it, but I can’t say it’s beeneasy.

(PhD student, quoted in Golde 2001)

Expected standards of doctoral research

When you set off on a car journey, major decisions on your route aredictated by the starting point and the nature of the destination, e.g. inwhich direction to travel, how much time it takes to get there, how manystops to make and what your destination looks like as you approach it.Importantly, the end of the journey influences decisions that are madeeven before the journey begins. In a similar way, an understanding of theend-point of the PhD degree should influence how you embark on yourresearch project. Thus, knowledge of the expected standards of the PhDdegree will help you plan your PhD project in a way that consciouslyaddresses such requirements. This section discusses in detail the question:


Exercise 1.1

1 Why do you want to do a PhD? List your reasons in order ofimportance.

2 What are your career plans for five and ten years time andhow will a PhD degree contribute to your career develop-ment?

What constitutes research at doctoral level? (the ‘destination’ of a PhD);later chapters will look at the means by which you achieve doctoralresearch (the ‘route’).

It is essential that you know the expected standards for doctoralresearch if you are to adequately plan your research objectives and assessyour progress. There are at least four main methods to understand theexpected standard of research at doctoral level:

1 Identify the regulations and expectations as set out in formaluniversity documents.

2 Discuss such issues with your supervisor, other academics and otherPhD students.

3 Read other PhD theses in your research area (an under-usedmethod).

4 Investigate and be aware of the criteria that PhD examiners use toassess doctoral research (see Chapter 7).

In this section, I will focus on the regulations and expected standards.An improved understanding of the requirements for the award

of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) can be achieved by comparison with the general requirements for the award of Master of Philosophy (MPhil).Although the details vary among different universities, an MPhil usu-ally requires the student to demonstrate an understanding of researchmethods appropriate to the discipline and to implement research skillsnecessary to carry out supervised research at a professional level. TheMPhil may require originality in the application of existing knowledge,and the ability to critically evaluate current research and understandingin the discipline. The MPhil involves a shorter registration period andthe thesis is typically shorter than the PhD thesis and does not have tobe of a publishable standard. Overall, compared to the PhD, the MPhilis of more limited scope and less exacting in its demands for originality,depth and scope of investigation, critical evaluation and independence.

The expected standard of the PhD degree is exemplified by thefollowing definition:

A PhD thesis must form a distinct contribution to the knowledge ofthe subject and afford evidence of originality, shown by the discoveryof new facts, or by the exercise of independent critical power.Additionally, a PhD thesis must show work which, if written in asuitable form, would be publishable.

(modified from Cryer 2000: 186)


There are several versions of this type of definition, but key issues used when defining or discussing the expected standard of a PhD degreeare ‘independence’, ‘contribution to knowledge’, ‘originality’, and‘suitability for publication’. In the following sections, I discuss thesefundamental requirements. It is important that you discuss these issueswith your supervisor (and other PhD students), in order to gain a firmunderstanding about how the general principles in this chapter apply toyour specific research.

Independence

The PhD degree provides a learning experience such that the PhDresearch student will graduate as an independent researcher. Therefore,the PhD graduate is expected to be able to conduct advanced researchwithout supervision, and be capable of identifying research questions ofrelevance and significance, designing an appropriate and feasiblemethodology to test such questions, and communicating the researchfindings at a level of significant scholarship.

It is expected that the PhD research and thesis are the student’s ownwork. Of course, the supervisor has a significant role as a guide from whoma certain amount of assistance can be expected. The requirement forindependence is certainly not a justification for a supervisor to neglecttheir responsibilities; however, there are limits to the assistance that asupervisor should provide (see Chapter 2). As an example, examinersindicated that the requirement for independence would not be upheldwhere the supervisor writes sections of the thesis, or directly analyses andinterprets the student’s data (Hockey 1997: 50). Although it is commonfor supervisors to have a strong guiding role in the initial stages of aproject, one would have to seriously question the independence of a PhDstudent’s work if it has been totally inspired and designed by the supervisorwith little or no opportunity for the student to contribute; a student isalmost certainly not receiving training to be an independent researcherif they are effectively being treated as a specialised research assistant.

A modern feature of research in many disciplines is an increase inlarger, collaborative research projects that involve a team of researchers,including PhD students. In such cases, there may well be an overlap insome work or contributions by several individuals, but this need notnecessarily clash with the requirement for independence. To clarify thesituation, however, many universities request that the PhD thesis isaccompanied by a statement from the student that describes the extentto which others assisted the doctoral research, with a clear description of


the nature of this assistance. Such a clarification may also arise when thestudent includes a published paper as part of their submitted thesis (seeChapter 5).

Contribution to knowledge

Despite the widespread and important expectation that PhD researchwill make a distinct or significant contribution to knowledge, there isrelatively little elaboration of either the nature or extent of this con-tribution. The nature of the contribution to knowledge will be expectedto vary across disciplines; for example, the form of a contribution toknowledge will differ, depending on whether the research discipline ishistory, philosophy, music, politics, biology, physics or chemistry. Never-theless, some common components of what constitutes a contribution toknowledge can be identified, which should be generally applicable. Thesecomponents include the nature of the research question, the use of aneffective research methodology and evidence of critical evaluation.

Nature of the research question

Not all research that can be carried out is necessarily appropriate to a doctoral research programme; research is not necessarily of a doctoralstandard just because it is systematic, establishes facts or collects infor-mation. There are many reports that conduct investigations to establishfacts or collect information, e.g. surveys of the number of unemployedpeople in geographical regions, house price comparisons, pollution levelsin rivers and lakes, or smoking and drinking habits of men and women.Despite the fact that such investigations may be important, difficult tocompile and complex to analyse, they would not usually be consideredappropriate research topics for doctoral research.

So what exactly is it about doctoral research that is different? To make a contribution to knowledge, doctoral research is expected to work at the boundaries of knowledge, and is characterised by a contri-bution to the conceptual or theoretical development of a researchdiscipline. One of the features and advantages of a theoretical basis todoctoral research is that theory facilitates the formulation of predictions and hypotheses, which become the doctoral research questions. In this way, the research contributes to an advancement in understanding.Across many disciplines, examiners (and other readers) expect doctoralresearch to have a strong theoretical or conceptual basis and to do thefollowing:


identify and explain relevant relationships between the facts. In other words, the researchers must produce a concept or build atheoretical structure that can explain facts and the relationshipsbetween them . . . The importance of theory is to help the inves-tigator summarise previous information and guide his [sic] futurecourse of action. Sometimes the formulation of a theory may indicatemissing ideas or links and the kinds of additional data required. Thus, a theory is an essential tool of research in stimulating theadvancement of knowledge still further.

(Verma and Beard 1981: 10)

Thus, doctoral research questions typically investigate the relationshipbetween variables, within the context of the conceptual or theoreticaldevelopment of the discipline. In this way, doctoral research goes beyondjust being a descriptive study and operates at a deeper level that seeksexplanations, tests predictions and aims to extend understanding at theforefront of the discipline.

Doctoral research questions are expected to have a sense of beingworthwhile, i.e. be non-trivial, but this should be relatively easy to ensure.Obviously, when doctoral research is aimed at either extending theboundaries of knowledge through a broadening of the scope of the disci-pline (new knowledge through new investigation) or a reorganisation of understanding associated with the existing discipline (new knowledgethrough critical evaluation that leads to a modified/improved inter-pretation of previous knowledge), then the mutual dependence between‘originality’ and the ‘contribution to knowledge’ quickly becomes evident.A separate and more detailed discussion of originality is provided below.

Effective methodology

As you identify appropriate research questions for your doctoral research,you will also begin to consider how the research will be conducted to address these questions. This stage of research design is infused withdecision-making and choices about the approaches to conducting theresearch. A research methodology involves a thorough reflection,identification and justification of the choice of research methods:

To be sure, there already exist traditions and ‘blueprints’ of practicewhich suggest – more or (often) less critically – ways of proceed-ing and which frequently condition our view of how phenomenashould be investigated. But these should never be seen as techniques


which can be lifted wholesale from other accounts and importeduncritically into an enquiry motivated by specifically differentsituations and subjects . . . Thus methodology starts quite simply byasking questions such as: ‘Why interview?’, ‘Why carry out a ques-tionnaire survey?’, ‘Why interview 25 rather than 5000 participants?’.Decisions such as these are apparently often practical, but they carryvery deep, often unarticulated implications. They are often based onvalues and assumptions which influence the study, and as suchtherefore need to be fully interrogated in order to clarify the researchdecisions which are made.

(Clough and Nutbrown 2002: 17, 22)

Thus, you need to provide a clear explanation of the assumptions thatunderpin your decision-making when designing your research, some ofwhich are explicit but, if you are not careful, more of which may beimplied or assumed.

It should also be clear that ‘methodology’ is not the same as ‘researchmethods’; methodological considerations aim to ensure that the chosenresearch methods are valid, reliable, rigorous and appropriate to theresearch questions. Given that you are investigating an original researchquestion, it may well be that the most appropriate method of inves-tigation will require the modification of an existing research method, orthe design of a completely new method. Of course, no single methodology is perfect and the ability to identify the limitations associated with a particular methodology (your own, and that of others) is an importantdemonstration of your mastery of your research discipline. Your method-ological considerations should fully identify and consider any existinglimitations to interpretation that your methodology helps to overcome,as well as any remaining (or new) limitations.

The ability to carefully consider and select an appropriate researchmethodology is a fundamental criterion for the award of PhD degree. Yourresearch practices should arise from an evaluation of different approaches,so that you choose with justification the approach that maximises thevalidity, reliability and appropriateness of your research methodology.For example, the examination criteria of the Institute of Education (seeBox 7.1, in Chapter 7) state that:

Since determination of the most appropriate methodology is notalways a straightforward matter, candidates should justify themethods chosen, with an appropriate rationale in each case . . .Potential alternative methods should be rejected on the basis of a


reasoned case. Candidates should be able to demonstrate that themethods used have been chosen through a conscious process ofdeliberation; and that the criteria for, and advantages and disad-vantages of, particular choices of method are well specified.

To summarise this section, an important outcome of a good methodologyis that the reader (including an examiner) has more confidence in thevalidity of the design and execution of the research, and yourcontribution to knowledge is more convincing, persuasive andauthoritative. Not surprisingly, PhD examiners place a strong emphasison proficiency in research methodology, and methodological questionsare a feature of the oral examination (Trafford and Leshem 2002; Mullinsand Kiley 2002; see Chapter 7). Thus, there is an onus on you to includemethodological considerations in your research planning, and tocommunicate clearly in the thesis how you have considered and justifiedyour choice of methods (see Chapter 7). A written account in the PhDthesis of such considerations provides the examiners with evidence ofyour ability to independently conduct research.

Evidence of critical evaluation

Your thesis will be examined to ensure that it contains an intellectualappreciation of the conceptual and theoretical basis of your researchdiscipline, as well as the limitations and wider significance of the


Exercise 1.2

1 Identify the research methods of PhD theses from paststudents and from selected important research papers in yourdiscipline.

2 Does the thesis communicate clearly the justification for theselection of the methods?

3 Are the methods valid, reliable and persuasive? Explain youranswer.

4 In your research, what methods have you adopted? Why haveyou chosen these particular methods? What assumptionsunderpin your choices?

5 Are you confident that your chosen research methodscorrespond to the research objectives?

contribution to knowledge made by your research. Evidence of yourintellectual appreciation and command of the subject area will be par-ticularly evident in your critical evaluation that appears in the literaturereview (see Chapter 4), and the rationale that supports your identificationof the doctoral research questions. Similarly, the methodologicalconsiderations that inform your selection of the appropriate researchmethods will be dependent on your critical evaluation. It is particularlyimportant to identify the contribution of your research to the knowledgeof the wider research discipline, e.g. how does your research relate to theexisting understanding of your subject and what advances in theory,concepts or methodology has your thesis provided? The evaluationcriteria suggested in Chapters 4 and 6 will provide a useful guide toevaluating the contribution of your own research to the wider researchdiscipline. Note that although there are sections of your thesis that aremore readily identifiable as a critical evaluation of the research disciplinethan others, the critical evaluation of your research methodology, yourresearch findings and the wider research discipline is part of a criticalresearch attitude that should permeate all your doctoral research.

Although the structure of a PhD thesis differs across faculties anduniversities, a common structure includes a lengthy introductory chapterthat incorporates a literature review, and a concluding chapter in whichthe contribution of your research to the knowledge of the wider researchdiscipline is identified. Individual chapters may also contain other moredetailed review, description of methodology and discussion. Such sectionsof the thesis provide evidence of critical evaluation. Irrespective of thespecific thesis structure, however, such critical evaluation must appearsomewhere in your thesis.

Originality

An original contribution to knowledge is an especially prominentrequirement for the award of a PhD degree. But what is originality? Howdoes one develop and recognise it? How much originality should a PhDthesis possess?

In addressing these questions, it seems that ‘there is little or nodiscussion between supervisors and students of what constitutesoriginality in the PhD’ (Phillips and Pugh 1994: 62). Supervisors are ableto judge the limitations and reasonable expectations associated with thePhD, and appreciate that it is not too difficult for research to possessoriginality. In contrast, students in the early stages of their doctoralresearch can be unsure about the magnitude of the original contribution


to knowledge that is required, and may over-compensate by being far tooambitious in their research plans. If you are worried about the extent oforiginality in your work, discuss and clarify these issues with yoursupervisor. Exercise 1.3 may also improve your ability to judge theseexpectations for yourself.

The following discussion of originality largely relies on lecture notesprovided by Michael Talbot, a retired Professor of Music at the Universityof Liverpool. He also provides an encouraging message for PhD students– that the achievement of originality in the PhD thesis is not as dauntingor difficult as you might think:

The recognition and acceptance that originality in the PhD typicallytransforms into an achievable requirement should be quite reassuringto research students. Of course, flashes of inspiration are infrequentin any scholar’s life. In fact, most kinds of originality do not dependon them. Originality can be built up almost by stealth, as one thingleads (normally gently) to another. It often happens that one arrives


Exercise 1.3

This exercise aims to improve your awareness of the standard,originality and contribution to knowledge that can be expectedfrom the PhD.

1 Read some completed PhD theses from your department andidentify:

• their originality • their contribution to knowledge• their critical evaluation.

Do the theses clearly indicate how they made an originalcontribution to knowledge? Where is this evident?

2 If possible, talk to other PhD students about what theyconsider to be the original contribution to knowledge madeby their research.

3 Identify how your doctoral research is likely to demonstratean original contribution to knowledge and critical evaluation.

at the end of a project before one is able to take the measure of howoriginal the contribution is, and this illustrates the point . . . thatoriginality is a by-product of quite ordinary scholarly activity. It arisesby itself, uninvited. All one has to do is to recognise it when itemerges and give it full scope.

(Talbot, pers. comm.)

This statement about originality being an achievable requirement is consistent with the view that the PhD project as a whole should bemanageable and achievable. Originality may be achieved throughexceptionally profound (but rare) insights; however, originality is moreoften achieved through ‘quite ordinary scholarly activity’. When doctoralresearch aims to extend the boundaries of knowledge, the mutual depen-dence between ‘originality’ and the ‘contribution to knowledge’ is mostevident: it is difficult to imagine how a contribution to knowledge atdoctoral level could be made without some originality. The importantpoint is to actively identify such originality when it occurs and to pursueand develop its contribution to your doctoral research.

Talbot highlights how originality is not dependent on moments of brilliance, but can arise from ordinary research as result of recognisingresearch links or relationships: ‘originality, nine times out of ten, is notabout invention but about combination. In other words, it is about bringingtogether known elements that hitherto have been kept apart rather thanconjuring new things out of the void’ (Michael Talbot, pers. comm.).Based on a simple but useful scheme, Talbot discusses the potential fororiginality to arise by linking ‘ideas’ (‘ways of marshalling the facts toproduce arguments, inferences, hypotheses and conclusions’) and ‘facts’(‘verifiable data’), and whether they are ‘old’ or ‘new’, as follows:

1 New facts + new ideas.2 New facts + old ideas.3 Old facts + new ideas.4 Old facts + old ideas.

Using this example, only the last combination offers no scope fororiginality. Of course, this basic distinction between ‘facts’ and ‘ideas’can be extended to include further distinctions between ‘theory’,‘hypotheses’, ‘methods’ and ‘facts’, each of which may be old or new, e.g.old theory + new hypotheses + old methods + new facts. A specificexample of how a combinatory approach contributed to originality isprovided in Box 1.1.


Some general examples of how originality may arise in doctoralresearch is provided in Appendix 1; note how frequently the combinationof old approaches to new situations (and new approaches to old situ-ations) features in these examples.


Box 1.1 Case study of originality

Michael Talbot (pers. comm.) provides an example of originalityfrom the work by a former PhD student of his, Paul Everett, whowas interested in the analysis of the physical properties of paperused in historical musical manuscripts:

‘I pointed [Paul] towards a group of articles on paper analysisthat would serve as a “crash course” in bibliography. When he readthem, he suddenly realised that he could apply sophisticatedbibliographical techniques familiar to students of English tomusical manuscripts, but developing them to take account of aspecial property of paper [that is] used for writing down music: the stave-lines drawn across the page. To rule these lines, one needs an instrument (a rastrum or rastral) that draws one, two, four, six, twelve or however many five-line staves one wants, in asingle action. Each such instrument has its peculiar characteristics(rather like an old-fashioned typewriter), and if a given rastrum is employed only for one kind of paper, it is possible to define the music manuscript paper not in traditional terms based ondimensions, colour, thickness, watermarks and chainlines but interms of its rastrography: the pattern of ruled staves (which aremuch more amenable to inspection than, for instance, water-marks). Within a mere month, Paul had perfected his system for identifying and classifying rastrographies (this term was coinedby him), and, with it, the new science of rastrology. Today, he is aworld expert in the science, and Vivaldi (and other) scholars writeto him for advice and assistance.

‘Where this fits in with our subject of originality is that Paul’sbrainwave arose from combination. The starting point was hisapplication to musicology of an approach not ready-made butappropriated from literary bibliography. Once this breakthroughhad been made, the rest was just a matter of technique andpersistence.’

Suitability for publication

‘Publication’ usually refers to publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but can also refer to publication of the thesis as a book or researchmonograph. Here, I discuss the common expectation that the PhD thesiscontains elements that are worthy of publication. Many universitiesrequire that a PhD thesis must contain work that is worthy of beingpublished, some other universities have no such requirement while othersmake publication a formal requirement for award of the PhD degree (e.g.some universities in The Netherlands, Sweden and Eastern Europeancountries). You should find out what the relevant regulations are at youruniversity.

Although it may not be strictly necessary to have published any of your doctoral research before the PhD examination (where the thesisis expected to show potential for publication), having some of your workin press or published provides examiners with prima facie evidence thatyour work satisfies the requirement to be of publishable quality (seeChapter 6). Not all the doctoral research reported in the thesis must beworthy of publication – it is sufficient for some of the research to attainthis standard. However, some universities specify that the quantity andquality of the thesis should be approximately equivalent to any numberfrom one to four journal publications, depending on the university andcountry. In terms of developing your professional career, it may be quiteimportant to ensure that a significant proportion of your doctoral researchis publishable (see Chapter 6).


Box 1.2 Generic questions to assess doctoral standard

Trafford and Leshem (2002) identified a number of genericquestions that examiners predictably ask in the oral examination(the questions are reproduced in Chapter 7). They point out thata consideration of these questions, which assess the doctoral qualityin the oral examination, may also help students at the beginningof their doctoral research to better approach the design, conduct,analysis and presentation of their research throughout the durationof the PhD, in a way that consciously achieves and demonstratesdoctoral qualities. They acknowledge the potential difficulties intrying to answer these questions, but warn that

Educational and professional benefits of aPhD degree

A doctorate represents the culmination of higher education, so whateducational benefits may be expected? You may not reflect too deeply onthis in the earlier stages of the PhD programme, but these issues invari-ably become more important as you approach the end of your PhD. Anawareness of the education and skills that you develop during yourdoctoral research will be invaluable when you finish your research andbegin the next stage of your career.

Transformative experience

Ultimately, education is an experience of personal transformation,although the nature of the transformation varies considerably and maybe intensely personal. Examples of such personal transformations includegaining a qualification, learning and developing new skills, improvingemployment opportunities, professional development, personal devel-opment, the pursuit of a challenge, the pleasure of learning and theadvancement of knowledge. Of course, these examples are neitherexhaustive nor mutually exclusive.

Specialist knowledge and skills

Traditionally, the specialist knowledge and skills developed during thePhD were seen as a preparation for a career in research or academia. It isdifficult to be prescriptive, but examples might include: specialistknowledge of your subject discipline; awareness of the boundaries ofknowledge within your subject discipline; an ability to describe a researchproblem and develop an appropriate methodology; the ability to usespecialised software or technical equipment. Nevertheless, the realitynowadays is that many PhD graduates do not continue in research or


if these difficulties are not resolved, then they will appear asserious omissions, or major faults, within the submitted thesis.Although the task may be difficult, it is a necessary part of theresearch process and one that can remove later problems foryou.

(ibid.: 48)

academia, but enter quite different careers where they are highlysuccessful (and desired by employers). Therefore, it should be obviousthat the completion of doctoral research endows the student with morethan just specialist knowledge.

Transferable skills

The completion of a postgraduate research degree typically demonstratesability to sustain application to a research project for a substantial periodof time and apply a variety of management and communication skills to an original piece of research. This should also indicate ability tosuccessfully manage a project; to identify and resolve problems; to demon-strate initiative and determination; and to communicate to a highstandard. Interviews with doctoral graduates indicated that, in theiropinion, one of the most important outcomes from the PhD process isthe training and development of practical and intellectual skills as muchas (if not more than) the original contribution to knowledge from theirresearch (Pole 2000).

These abilities associated with the process of getting a PhD areapplicable to a wide variety of situations; hence, they are known astransferable skills. The Joint Skills Statement in Box 1.3 describes thetransferable skills that a typical doctoral research student (in the UK, atleast) would be expected to develop during their research training.


Box 1.3 Joint Statement of the Research Councils’/AHRB’S Skills Training Requirements for ResearchStudents

(A) Research skills and techniques – to be able to demonstrate:1. The ability to recognise and validate problems.2. Original, independent and critical thinking, and the ability to

develop theoretical concepts.3. A knowledge of recent advances within one’s field and in

related areas.4. An understanding of relevant research methodologies and

techniques and their appropriate application within one’sresearch field.

5. The ability to critically analyse and evaluate one’s findings andthose of others.


6. An ability to summarise, document, report and reflect onprogress.

(B) Research environment – to be able to:1. Show a broad understanding of the context, at the national

and international level, in which research takes place.2. Demonstrate awareness of issues relating to the rights of other

researchers, of research subjects, and of others who may beaffected by the research, e.g. confidentiality, ethical issues,attribution, copyright, malpractice, ownership of data and therequirements of the Data Protection Act.

3. Demonstrate appreciation of standards of good researchpractice in their institution and/or discipline.

4. Understand relevant health and safety issues and demonstrateresponsible working practices.

5. Understand the processes for funding and evaluation ofresearch.

6. Justify the principles and experimental techniques used inone’s own research.

7. Understand the process of academic or commercial exploita-tion of research results.

(C) Research management – to be able to:1. Apply effective project management through the setting of

research goals, intermediate milestones and prioritisation ofactivities.

2. Design and execute systems for the acquisition and colla-tion of information through the effective use of appropriateresources and equipment.

3. Identify and access appropriate bibliographical resources,archives, and other sources of relevant information.

4. Use information technology appropriately for databasemanagement, recording and presenting information.

(D) Personal effectiveness – to be able to:1. Demonstrate a willingness and ability to learn and acquire

knowledge.2. Be creative, innovative and original in one’s approach to

research.


3. Demonstrate flexibility and open-mindedness.4. Demonstrate self-awareness and the ability to identify own

training needs.5. Demonstrate self-discipline, motivation, and thoroughness.6. Recognise boundaries and draw upon/use sources of support as

appropriate.7. Show initiative, work independently and be self-reliant.

(E) Communication skills – to be able to:1. Write clearly and in a style appropriate to purpose, e.g.

progress reports, published documents, thesis.2. Construct coherent arguments and articulate ideas clearly to

a range of audiences, formally and informally through a varietyof techniques.

3. Constructively defend research outcomes at seminars and vivaexamination.

4. Contribute to promoting the public understanding of one’sresearch field.

5. Effectively support the learning of others when involved inteaching, mentoring or demonstrating activities.

(F) Networking and teamworking – to be able to:1. Develop and maintain co-operative networks and working

relationships with supervisors, colleagues and peers, within theinstitution and the wider research community.

2. Understand one’s behaviours and impact on others whenworking in and contributing to the success of formal andinformal teams.

3. Listen, give and receive feedback and respond perceptively toothers.

(G) Career management – to be able to:1. Appreciate the need for and show commitment to continued

professional development.2. Take ownership of and manage one’s career progression, set

realistic and achievable career goals, and identify and developways to improve employability.

Research and transferable skills may be learned in a number of ways.Some universities have dedicated taught courses that PhD students mustundertake, and this is becoming more widespread. However, attendanceat formal taught courses should supplement other methods, for example,self-tuition through reading relevant literature and training manuals;practising new skills; reflecting on your research and management prac-tices; reflecting on and learning from your past experiences; tutoring byyour supervisor, and learning from other postgraduate students.

Networking

One of the functions of the award of the PhD degree is to acknowledgethe candidate’s entry as an equal to a community of scholarship.Nevertheless, your participation in the academic community shouldbegin long before then. This community is comprised of fellow research


3. Demonstrate an insight into the transferable nature of researchskills to other work environments and the range of careeropportunities within and outside academia.

4. Present one’s skills, personal attributes and experiencesthrough effective CVs, applications and interviews.

Source: <http://www.grad.ac.uk/3_2_1.jsp>Developed by the UK Research Councils, Arts and HumanitiesResearch Board and UK GRAD Programme. Reproduced withpermission.

Exercise 1.4

1 What transferable skills are you:

• developing?• improving? • mastering?

It may be useful to repeat this exercise every six to eight months,as your PhD progresses.

students, more senior researchers and academic staff, both within andoutside your university or research institute. Networking and engagingwith other scholars and practitioners are excellent ways of exchanginginformation, getting feedback on your ideas and keeping up to date withnew developments: ‘New ideas and techniques come from using mentaland technical skills in communities which value them and are producingthem. In the research process the ongoing activities of others are promptsfor the development of one’s own work’ (Francis 1997: 23).

Networking is a feature of the modern academic community, and for the PhD student it performs a number of important functions. First,finding out about the work of other researchers is an opportunity to betterunderstand the context, originality, contribution and standard of yourown research; for most students, this can be a very reassuring experiencethat confirms that their work is comparable to the standards of otherresearchers. Second, networking exposes one to professional academicdiscourse. The research community tends to communicate by followingcertain conventions and it is important for PhD students to learn toengage in such academic discourse when communicating with otherresearchers. As one example of academic discourse, note the blend oflogic, advocacy and caution with which researchers may present a newidea: the responsible researcher provides evidence for an argument thatis tempered with caveats about methodology or applicability. When youattend a presentation at a meeting or conference, note the nature of thequestions and how the presenter deals with them. Questions may be very politely stated, yet extremely penetrating and rigorous. Similarly,the ways in which questions are answered can be revealing. One can learna lot from the strategies that experienced academics use to answerquestions. For example, questions may be paraphrased, qualified or splitinto two more distinct questions, and explanations are based on reasonedarguments. You may also encounter examples of how not to answer aquestion, but such cases are of learning value also. As another exampleof academic discourse, more informal discussions with researchers canexplore a richer variety of viewpoints and contain more speculation thanis either possible or appropriate in a public lecture. Very often, it is duringthese informal discussions and exchanges of ideas that academic alliancesare formed, and it is an example of the importance of face-to-facemeetings with other researchers. An important point is that you shouldaim to learn from academic discourse as performed by professionalresearchers because it is invaluable both when writing your thesis andwhen answering questions during your viva. The PhD oral examinationis an important example of academic discourse, and being able to discuss


your thesis in the manner of a professional academic is another way inwhich you can fulfil the expectations of the examiners. A third functionof networking is its direct contribution to your career development: yourinteraction with other researchers may identify potential for collabora-tive work, which may even result in securing employment options after your PhD. For example, although relatively rare, it is not unknown forPhD students to leave a conference with an invitation to attend a jobinterview or an offer of a research position. Fourth, networking withothers can be a powerful force for motivation, and prevents you fromfeeling academically isolated.

PhD students should have several opportunities for networking and interacting. Within your own institution, you have the academicinteraction with your supervisor and other PhD students and there is most probably a variety of university seminars, departmental seminars,discussion groups and student presentations. Attendance at conferencesand meetings of special interest groups or societies is an invaluable way of making contact with relevant researchers in other universities or research institutions. The medium of email makes it much easier to develop and maintain contacts with researchers, or to participate inelectronic discussions (but beware of devoting too much time to net-working and not enough to your research!).

Over the duration of your research programme, it is most likely thatthere will be at least one important conference that is related to yourspecific research area. Unfortunately, there are limited funds to providePhD students with travel expenses to attend international meetings orconferences. Grants are often available from universities, societies andfunding agencies for research students to attend conferences. Even if youcannot identify travel funds, be sure to inform your supervisor of yourdesire to attend a conference; in the manner of a magician pulling a rabbitfrom a hat, supervisors can sometimes be adept at sourcing funds to senda research student to a particularly relevant and important conference.

Conclusion

The PhD degree is awarded as evidence that the doctoral graduate iscapable of independently conducting original research of a professionalstandard. This chapter should serve to heighten your appreciation of therequired standard for the award of a PhD degree and may facilitate a moredetailed and focused discussion about these issues with your supervisor.It is crucial that you understand the issues about independence, makinga contribution to knowledge, originality, and suitability for publication,


and that you can identify these qualities in your doctoral research. Inaddition to providing you with training in the process of doing research,the specialist and transferable skills associated with doctoral research alsoprovide benefits to your educational and professional development.

Recommended reading

Publications

Phillips, E.M. and Pugh, D.S. (1994) How to Get a PhD: A Handbook for Studentsand their Supervisors, 2nd edn, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Highly recommended.

Cryer, P. (2000) The Research Student’s Guide to Success, Buckingham: OpenUniversity Press.

Highly recommended. An extremely useful and wide-ranging treatment of thepersonal and academic challenges of pursuing postgraduate research.

Clough, P. and Nutbrown, C. (2002) A Student’s Guide to Methodology, London:Sage.

See especially Chapter 2. Provides a detailed discussion of methodology set inthe context of social sciences but applicable to most disciplines.

Walliman, N. (2001) Your Research Project: A Step-by-Step Guide for the First-Time Researcher, London: Sage.

Good introduction to a philosophical treatment of the nature of knowledge anddifferent research approaches.

Online resources

‘For Grad Students’ in Science’s Next Wave. http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/grd.dtlHighly recommended. This is a portal to a wide variety of extremely usefularticles and discussions on numerous aspects related to the experience of beinga PhD student. It is well worth spending time on browsing the variety of issues.

Handbook for Research Higher Degree Students, James Cook University, Australia.http://www.jcu.edu.au/courses/handbooks/research/appendixg.htmlProvides PhD guidelines that reflect differences appropriate to each faculty.

‘Originality and the postgraduate student’ by the Language and Learning SkillsUnit, University of Melbourne.

http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/llsu/resources/pg003.html


‘A PhD in just over a year and a half . . . ’ by Frank Wareing.http://www.missendencentre.co.uk/PhD1.pdf

‘Network your way into work’, by Dick van Vlooten.http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2003/12/11/3An entertaining and insightful article on principles of networking.


Chapter 2

You and your supervisor

Introduction

The academic relationship between students and supervisors is animportant one that may last long after the duration of the research degree.You and your supervisor will work together over a period of at least threeyears, so it is important that you have a good working relationship thatis based on mutual respect, trust and understanding. Throughout yourPhD project, your supervisor will be a key figure as an intellectual guide,research mentor, career guide, a source of administrative information and an interface with the formal university procedures. Unfortunately,many students only have vague ideas of what they can expect from theirsupervisor (and what their supervisor can expect from them). Forexample, students who under-estimate the expected contribution fromtheir supervisor will not avail themselves of the assistance that they areentitled to (and for which they pay fees . . . ), while students who over-estimate their supervisor’s contribution will be misguided in expectingan excessive level of assistance. In both cases, such ambiguity is a recipefor misunderstanding, frustration or even conflict.

To get the most out of the student/supervisor relationship, you needto be clear on the nature and extent of the duties and expectationsassociated with both roles in the student/supervisor relationship. Here,the relationship between student and supervisor is discussed, with anexamination of the academic duties of both the supervisor and researchstudent. Some strategies are suggested to improve communicationbetween you and your supervisor, and some of the issues and problemsthat may arise are discussed.

Responsibilities of students and supervisors

The National Postgraduate Committee (NPC) in the United Kingdomprovides a number of guideline documents that contain very usefulfurther information (www.npc.org.uk/essentials/publications). Theirpublication Guidelines on Codes of Practice for Postgraduate Research (NPC1992) makes recommendations on the relationship of research studentsto their supervisors and their departments. For example, it indicates the responsibilities of the supervisors, students and those responsible for research students at the departmental level. The NPC (1995) has also published Guidelines on Accommodation and Facilities for Postgrad-uate Research, which makes recommendations on the needs of researchstudents for office space, facilities and to be part of the academiccommunity in their department.

If you are to develop a harmonious relationship with your supervisor,then it is essential that you fully appreciate the responsibilities of you and your supervisor: ‘there should be understanding, from the inceptionof the relationship, of the conventions by which it is to operate’ (NPC1992). An understanding of such conventions may be helpful in reducingdissatisfaction that may arise due to a mismatch between the expectationsof the supervisor and those of the student. As early as possible in yoursupervisory meetings, you should try and discuss such responsibilities andexpectations with your supervisor (see Exercise 2.1 for further discussion).It may also be useful to discuss such issues with other PhD students.

Many institutions now have Codes of Practice or other similardocuments that try to clarify the conventional responsibilities of studentsand supervisors, and I provide an example here. The details will differamong institutions, and such guidelines may not be exactly or entirelysuited to every discipline or every student/supervisor relationship;however, they are indicative of the main issues, and should provide abasis for further discussion between you and your supervisor.

What are the responsibilities of a supervisor?

Although this is a fundamental question, it is difficult to find aprescriptive answer. Nevertheless, a selection of the most importantduties of a supervisor would typically include the following:

1 Giving guidance on:

(a) induction;(b) the nature of the research and the standard expected;

You and your supervisor 33

(c) the planning of the research programme;(d) the nature and extent of the help the student may expect in

preparing a thesis in its final form for submission;(e) literature and training courses;(f) attendance at taught classes, where appropriate;(g) requisite techniques (including arranging for training where

necessary);(h) necessary safety precautions;(i) publication of the research.

2 Having relevant expertise to supervise the research degree. In some cases, a co-supervisor may be required to bring relevant expertise to the project. In such cases, the allocation of supervisoryresponsibilities between supervisors should be clearly defined andcommunicated to the student.

3 Maintaining contact with the student through regular tutorial andseminar meetings, in accordance with institutional policy and in thelight of discussion with the student.

4 Being accessible to the student at other appropriate times whenadvice may be needed.

5 Giving advice on the necessary completion dates of successive stagesof the work so that the whole thesis may be submitted within thescheduled time.

6 Requesting written work as appropriate, and returning such workwith feedback in a reasonable period of time.

7 Arranging, as appropriate, for the student to talk about their researchto staff at graduate seminars or conferences.

8 Writing reports on the student’s progress.9 Ensuring that the student is made aware of inadequacy of progress

or of standards of work below that generally expected.10 Actively introducing the student to researchers and events in the

academic community, e.g. conferences and meetings of learnedsocieties.

11 Informing the student of the institutional regulations concerning theoral examination, e.g. nomination procedures for the examiners, andappeals procedures.

(Source: Modified from The University of Reading 2004)

34 You and your supervisor

What are the responsibilities of a research student?

The duties of the student typically include:

1 Planning and discussing with the supervisor the research topic andtimetable for the research.

2 Discussing with the supervisor the type of guidance and feedbackthat are most helpful, and agreeing a schedule of meetings.

3 Taking the initiative in raising problems or difficulties, howeverelementary they may seem. This includes taking the initiative inarranging meetings.

4 Agreeing and observing any necessary safety precautions.5 Maintaining the progress of the work in accordance with the stages

agreed with the supervisor, in particular including the presentationof written materials (usually in word-processed or typed form) asrequired in sufficient time to allow for feedback and discussion beforeproceeding to the next stage.

6 Drafting and circulating the agenda and support documents inadvance of meetings, and drafting and circulating the minutes ofmeetings.

7 Keeping systematic records of work completed, and providing writtenprogress reports.

8 Showing all supervisors the final version of the thesis in plenty oftime to receive feedback before submission.

9 Deciding when they wish to submit the thesis within the prescribedperiod of registration, taking due account of the supervisor’sopinions.

(Source: Modified from The University of Reading 2004)

The most important responsibility of a student is to take the initiative inrelation to a variety of these issues. You are expected to be a competentresearcher, who organises and manages a range of project activities at aprofessional level. This includes being responsible for organising meetingswith your supervisor, and informing your supervisor of problems thataffect your progress.


Exercise 2.1

This exercise helps you to consider your responsibilities as a PhDstudent, and your expectations of your supervisor.

continued

The supervisor–student relationship

Although set within the more formalised conventions and responsibilitiesthat may appear in Codes of Practice, the relationship between studentsand supervisors is also an interpersonal one. The following sectionprovides an overview of some of the relationships that may arise betweenstudents and supervisor, beginning with a more abstract consideration ofthe topic before including some more practical issues that may arise.

Sociological research indicates, not surprisingly, that the supervisor–student relationship is a complex and varied one. Brown and Atkins(1988) described eleven roles for the supervisor as director, facilitator,adviser, teacher, guide, critic, freedom giver, supporter, friend, managerand examiner. Brown and Atkins also described a variety of possiblerelationships between supervisors and students:

Supervisor StudentDirector FollowerMaster ServantGuru DiscipleTeacher PupilExpert NoviceGuide ExplorerProject manager Team workerAuditor ClientEditor AuthorCounsellor ClientDoctor PatientSenior partner Junior professionalColleague ColleagueFriend Friend


1 What level of support and guidance do you expect from yourPhD supervisor? For example, practical assistance in thelab/field, frequency of meetings, reporting methods, depth offeedback and feedback method (oral or written), authorshipof publications arising from your research, etc.

2 What does your supervisor expect from you?3 Are your expectations reasonable?4 What will you do if these expectations are not fulfilled?

With such a multitude of possible roles and relationships (and there aremany more facets to these), it is little wonder that individual supervisor–student relationships can be so distinctive. It may also explain whystudents and supervisors may sometimes have different expectations of the supervisor–student relationship. To help avoid such differences,both you and your supervisor should discuss your expectations from the supervisory process. Among the variety of supervisor–student rela-tionships listed above, you will see some that are more nurturing andsupportive (guide–explorer, expert–novice), some where there is anobvious distribution of power and authority (master–servant, auditor–client), and others where there is a balanced relationship (colleague–colleague). An understanding of the variety of student/supervisorrelationships may help you recognise and perhaps influence the roles thatyou and your supervisor adopt.

Supervisory practices

Hockey (1997) reported a study of the supervisory process, resulting frominterviews with eighty-nine PhD supervisors in the UK. An analysis of


Exercise 2.2

This exercise encourages you to consider the nature of yoursupervisor–student relationship.

Read the different supervisor–student relationships describedby Brown and Atkins (see above) and consider the followingquestions:

1 Which of these roles and relationships do you think are mostdesirable? Explain your choices.

2 In your opinion, which of the above supervisory roles bestdescribes your relationship with your supervisor?

3 Which of the other supervisor–student relationships relateto your situation?

4 Can you identify advantages and disadvantages of these rolesand relationships?

5 How might the nature of your supervisor–student relation-ship change over time?

supervisor’s responses identified a number of practices central to theeffective supervision of research degrees. Although the interviews werewith supervisors working in the social sciences, the issues and practicesraised in the study appear to be applicable to supervisors across most otherresearch disciplines. The findings of the study are a useful insight intothe kind of support that supervisors deem to be important and aresummarised below:

• Balancing. Supervisors face a tension between some of their roles; inparticular they need to balance their responsibilities as both guideand critic:

On the one hand, supervisors are supposed to tender guidanceon the student’s academic endeavours, to suggest feasible path-ways through the morass of literature, mounds of theory andwhat are often, to the novice researcher, formidable practicalproblems of original research. However, on the other hand,somewhat paradoxically, supervisors are also charged with beingthe student’s first line examiner and are required to ensure thattheir charges produce material which meets the standards of adoctoral thesis.

(Hockey 1997: 49)

• Foreseeing. Described as the ability to assess accurately certain kindsof possibilities within the process of the research degree study. Forexample, the supervisor ascertains the suitability of a studentapplicant for the intellectual, analytical and fieldwork requirementsto conduct a research degree. The supervisor also judges thefeasibility of the project.

• Timing. The supervisor assesses the feasibility of the projected workschedule, assesses the timing and duration of component activitiesof the project and monitors the student’s progress. The supervisormay also match supervisory input with students’ needs over theduration of the project. For example, supervisors have more frequentmeetings with students at the beginning of the project (to focus on planning) and again at the end of the project (to focus oncompletion).

• Critiquing. According to Hockey:

The supervisor’s aim is to cultivate or even enforce rigour uponthe student’s intellectual thinking and writing . . . The process


of critiquing . . . involves a logical dissection of ideas, and arelentless pointing out of ways in which these ideas may becomemore precise, analytical and thus powerful in serving theresearch objective.

(1997: 56)

• Informing. Supervisors inform students of the practical activitieswhich occur during the research process, focusing on issues such as methodology, data handling and interpretation, writing, thepresentation of the thesis and the emotional experiences associatedwith a prolonged research project.

• Guiding. Hockey (1997) distinguished between intellectual guidanceand career guidance. The intellectual guidance contributes toenhancing the rate of progress, indicating the quality of research thatis desirable and expected, and providing feedback and reassuranceto ensure that the expected quality is attained. Supervisors alsoprovide career guidance:

they saw it as part of their responsibility to introduce [researchstudents] to certain kinds of understandings, practice andopportunities which are integral to the occupational culture ofacademics, and which are important to the effective pursuit ofa career.

(ibid.: 60)

In practice this may involve, for example, encouraging students tobecome involved in attending seminars, conferences and workshops.It also involves assisting the student in networking with othercolleagues and academics (see Chapter 1).

These practices are relevant to students for several reasons. First, anawareness of the supervisory practices that supervisors are supposed toprovide will help the student to ensure that they receive them. Second,research students also need to undertake some of these practices (fore-seeing, timing, critiquing and informing) or understand these issues(balancing and guiding). In effect, these practices are importantcomponents of project management for both the student and supervisor.Supervisors have more experience of these practices and should be in a better position to guide the student’s judgement. However, theavailability of the supervisor’s advice and guidance is not a substitute forthe student’s own efforts to manage and assess their progress.


An important practical issue for both students and supervisors is the amount of assistance that research students can expect from theirsupervisor. Reflecting the ‘balancing’ that supervisors undertake, super-visors must decide how much guidance and support they can provide tostudents without transgressing institutional requirements (and academictradition) that the thesis is the student’s own work. The followingindicates how supervisors attempt to achieve this balance:

Aid which actively solved [particular intellectual] problems wasviewed as a violation of student responsibility and beyond the limit.[For an example of boundary-making decisions] . . . supervisors wouldpoint their students in the general direction of relevant literature,but they would not provide them with a comprehensive list ofsources they should read. Moreover, they would aid students withdata analysis by illustrating a particular statistical technique, but theywould not actually manipulate the students’ data. They wouldtherefore illustrate or explain general cases, but not the particular.

(ibid.: 50)

Probably in recognition that no individual supervisor can possess the full spectrum of academic expertise and research skills, many institutionsnow have thesis committees (or a group with some similar name). Thiscommittee usually comprises of a small number of research staff thatbrings different skills and perspectives to the research project. Typicallythey meet to assess and give feedback on the student’s progress. If thereis a thesis committee, ensure that you know the extent of its duties andresponsibilities. For example, how often will the committee meet and(where appropriate) will it contribute to a decision on your upgradingfrom MPhil to PhD?

Communicating with your supervisor

Your academic supervisor has a very important role in advising you onhow best to make progress during your research. Therefore, you need toensure that there is sufficient and effective communication between youand your supervisor. It is difficult to suggest an optimal amount ofcommunication (e.g. frequency and duration of meetings), and somestudents require more than others. Of course, there is also a significantdifference between the quantity and quality of communication that canoccur. This section provides some strategies and practical suggestions formaking the most of communication between you and your supervisor.


Achieving more effective communication with yoursupervisor

Although your doctoral project dominates your time and efforts, yourproject is just one of many of your supervisor’s commitments (see Figure2.1). Understanding the relatively small proportion of your supervisor’stime that can be devoted to your thesis should encourage you to maximiseyour benefit from this time. In particular, it is essential that you make thebest use of the face-to-face meetings with your supervisor.

So, how do you make the most of your communication with yoursupervisor? The following points in Box 2.1 outline some practicalsuggestions about how to develop and maintain effective communicationwith your supervisor.


everything else student’s thesis

my thesis

everythingelse

Student Supervisor

Figure 2.1 Proportional relevance of thesis to student and supervisor

Box 2.1 Practical suggestions to maintain communi-cation with your supervisor

1. Discuss your expectations of your supervisor, and your supervisor’sexpectations of you.Unfortunately, students can experience dissatisfaction with the level of communication that exists between them and theirsupervisor. There can be many reasons for this, but a common one is that the research student lacks the confidence or ability to maintain regular, meaningful communication. This can becompounded by a supervisor who assumes that the student ismaking progress (‘no news is good news’) and is too busy to check.


Whatever the reasons, there is little doubt that ineffectivecommunication leads to ineffective supervision. It is important toestablish mutually acceptable patterns of communication andsupervision early in the PhD research programme. Neither you nor your supervisor is a mind reader, so the only way to do this isto discuss the expectations that you each have. The earlier thatsuch a discussion occurs the better, so that bad habits do notbecome established. Some examples of issues for discussion include:expected attendance patterns; the frequency and duration ofmeetings; the level of preparation for meetings (agendas, minutes);reporting and feedback practices; publication and authorshipexpectations.

Probably reflecting the power imbalance that exists betweensupervisors and students, you may feel awkward about raising suchissues. Indeed, you will probably need to use a mixture of asser-tiveness and diplomacy in such initial discussions. (Ultimately,however, it is your research degree. You will be the one who isjudged in the oral examination; therefore, you must take andmaintain responsibility for your research and its management.) It may help to preface such a discussion by explaining that youwould like the supervisor’s advice on some issues that you recogniseas being important. Most supervisors will interpret your initiativeas a sign of your professional approach and conscientious manage-ment of your research project.

2. Make appointments to see your supervisor.Your supervisor is likely to be a busy person, with many othercommitments. Some supervisors may have an ‘open door’ policy;however, for most, it is always advisable to make an appointment,as opposed to turning up unannounced. When you want a meeting,email or phone your supervisor with alternative dates and timeswhen you are available. It is a good idea to discuss these approachesto arranging a meeting with your supervisor and agree on the mostmutually convenient method.

3. Bring a written list of the issues to be discussed.Writing a list of the main issues for discussion will focus your mindon the main issues, help you to ask better questions, and thus helpyou to get the best feedback and advice. Such a list will serve as an

Project meetings

Effective communication is an important characteristic of successfulresearch projects, and may take the form of phone calls, emails, lettersand written reports or face-to-face meetings. The previous section makesclear the importance of face-to-face meetings with your supervisor, andmost students will rely on supervisory meetings for guidance when makingstrategic decisions about their research. Some broader issues that relateto supervisory meetings are discussed here.


agenda, and keep the discussion focused. Even better, give the listto your supervisor before the meeting, which allows them time toprepare and to give the issues more thought. When you have aproblem to resolve, try and bring some different solutions to themeeting. Although you may have done so many times before, beprepared to brief your supervisor on progress to date – the issuesthat seem familiar to you may not be so familiar to your supervisor.After the meeting, both the written list of issues and your noteswill be a useful record of the agreements reached during themeeting.

4. At the end of the meeting, agree on goals and indicate a date for thenext meeting.You should try to finish each meeting with agreement on the short-term goals to be addressed before the next meeting. After themeeting, use your notes to make a clear (written) statement aboutthese goals, and submit a copy to your supervisor. At the end of ameeting, fix a time and date for the next meeting, if possible;otherwise, at least try and get a clear indication of whether youexpect to meet again after a period of days or weeks.

5. Submit written work in good time, if you want to get useful feedback.When you submit work, make it clear that you are requestingfeedback, and by what date you wish the feedback to be provided.When there are deadlines involved, ensure that you submit writtenwork in reasonable time. If there is a lot of material, it is a goodidea to let your supervisor know in advance so that he/she canschedule the time required to review your work. More detaileddiscussion on feedback is provided in Chapter 5.

Informal meetings

Meetings vary in nature from the very informal to the very formal.Informal meetings tend to be unscheduled, of short duration and haveno written agenda. They might consist of a quick chat between you andyour supervisor at which you may request your supervisor to sign an orderfor equipment, arrange a longer meeting or briefly inform your supervisorabout a specific issue. This type of meeting may be the result of a chancemeeting along a corridor, a quick encounter over coffee, or a short visitto see to your supervisor in their office. While informal, such meetingscan be quite frequent and may be important in informing your supervisor’sperceptions about your progress. In the absence of any other information,many supervisors will (rightly or wrongly) simply take it for granted thatyou have no problems.

Let’s assume that this is not the case; in such an event, be sure to send a clear signal to your supervisor that all is not well. When asked ‘Howare you?’ in a social setting, conventions in many societies expect one toprovide a positive reply, such as ‘Fine’ or ‘Never better!’ It should beobvious that such a reply sends a signal to your supervisor (incorrectly,in this case) that you are getting along just fine. This is less of a problemfor students who regularly meet with their supervisor and can discuss theirprogress in a meaningful way, as there is an opportunity to correct anyfalse impressions. On the other hand, for students who see their supervisorless frequently, informal meetings should be used as an opportunity tocommunicate the existence of problems. In the context of an informalmeeting, it may be inappropriate to provide a detailed breakdown of aproblem. However, when asked ‘How are you?’, it should suffice to saysomething such as ‘Well, I could be better. I am having quite a bit oftrouble with . . . (whatever the issue is)’, or ‘I’m glad you asked, becauseI really need to arrange a meeting with you to discuss my latest research.’

Occasionally, informal meetings may develop into a longer conver-sation that discusses details of the progress of the project. This is valuableas a means of informing your supervisor of progress; however, be carefulwhen an informal meeting starts making strategic decisions about the project, or is making changes to previous decisions. It is likely that you will not be properly prepared for such a discussion, and you may find yourself agreeing with decisions that you may be unsure of later on. Therefore, even if you fully support these decisions, it is importantto write a short, dated report that describes the changes (and theirconsequences), and to give these to your supervisor as a record of theagreed decisions. If, during the meeting, you are even slightly unsureabout agreeing to changes to the research project, it is preferable to


summarise (verbally) the issues and ask your supervisor for time to thinkabout these. Then schedule a formal meeting to discuss the issues morethoroughly. This should give you time to write out the proposed changes,reflect on the proposed decisions and their consequences, and consideralternative options. Only then can you make the decision that is in thebest interest of your PhD project.

Formal meetings

Another particularly important form of communication is the moreformal project meeting in which proposals are discussed and decisions aremade. These meetings tend to be scheduled in advance, are of a reason-ably long duration (30–90 minutes) and should have an agreed agenda.I refer to these as formal meetings because they represent a formaloccasion within the management of your project; however, these meet-ings may vary in nature from a discussion over a cup of coffee to a muchmore official occasion at which other academics and representatives of afunding agency may attend. Regardless of the environment in which theyoccur, formal project meetings are extremely important and influentialevents in the management of your PhD project. Such meetings areimportant for defining the project, clarifying research questions andmethodologies, considering different alternatives, proposing changes,achieving consensus, making decisions and reviewing progress. Not all of these activities may occur at a single meeting, and some of theseactivities are more likely to occur at particular stages of the project thanothers. Nevertheless, it should be clear that the time devoted to projectmeetings has a disproportionate influence on the strategic direction ofthe project. For this reason, it is crucial that you (and your supervisor)are properly prepared for meetings.

The protocol of the meeting

Meetings between you and your supervisor will tend to settle into aroutine that you are both comfortable with (which is why you shouldadopt good habits from the beginning). However, meetings that involveother people will probably adopt a more defined protocol that is asso-ciated with more official meetings, such as meetings with your thesiscommittee, funding agency or upgrading committee. For the purposes ofthis section, I assume that people other than your supervisor are present;such meetings of a more official nature tend to adopt a protocol orconvention that can be off-putting when it is encountered for the first


time. Here, I provide a brief and general overview of some elements ofthe protocol associated with more formal meetings (you may also attendsuch meetings that do not directly affect your doctoral research).

Some time before a meeting is held, a provisional agenda is distributedby the chairman, perhaps by either email or letter, that lists a number oftopics to be discussed at the meeting. The agenda is a very importantdocument that allows participants to prepare for the issues to be discussedand to focus the objectives of the meeting. The agenda typically indicatesthe location and date of the meeting, indicates who is invited to attendand who is the chairman. Meetings typically begin with an opportunityto comment on or clarify the minutes of the previous meeting, which areusually circulated with the agenda. As an example, such comments orclarifications allow participants to correct any errors, or to requestadditional explanation of an issue. The remaining agenda items focus onthe issues that are the primary content of the meeting. Each item may beassociated with the name of the person who proposed the agenda item(and will presumably lead the discussion), and perhaps an indication ofthe time to be allocated to the item.

During meetings where there are several people present, you willsometimes have to work up a little courage and confidence to speak up.It may help to quickly jot down your question or comment, so that youcan refer to it if necessary. And remember, you don’t have to be the mosteloquent speaker in the room – you only have to get your point across.

Preparing for meetings

Decisions taken at project meetings about your research are likely to have major impacts on the direction and emphasis of your researchprogramme; therefore, it is crucial that you are prepared for meetings. Ifyou are not prepared, you will not feel able to make a useful contributionand decisions may be made that conflict with your own plans or visionfor your research. Worse still, you may not fully appreciate the ramifi-cations of such decisions until after the meeting; however, your lack ofobjection during the meeting will be interpreted as support for a decision.To stress the point, adequate preparation and reflection on agenda itemsbefore the meeting will help you to anticipate and recognise suchdifficulties if they cannot be avoided.

Further information on meetings is available at http://www.effectivemeetings.com/ and http://www.mapnp.org/library/grp_skll/meetings/meetings.htm. Exercise 2.3 provides some prompts that may help you toprepare for meetings.



Exercise 2.3

This exercise helps you to prepare for meetings of a more officialnature (and those with your supervisor) through a considerationof major issues associated with the organisation and conduct ofmeetings.

• Has an agenda been circulated?• Who is attending?• Is a chairman required? If so, who will chair the meeting?• Do I understand all the agenda items?• Do I have an opinion on all items on the agenda?• Have I read the minutes of the last meeting?• What protocol will be adopted during the meeting – very

formal or not?• Am I expected to discuss or contribute to a particular item

on the agenda?• Am I expected to make a presentation?• Is it appropriate and in my best interest to initiate a request

to make a presentation or to distribute a short report inadvance of the meeting?

• What outcomes do I expect from this meeting?• What outcomes do I prefer to achieve from this meeting?

Why?• What outcomes do I not want from this meeting? Why?• Do I expect any other attendees to disagree with or support

my views?• What time is the meeting?• Where is the meeting?• Do I know exactly in which building and in which room the

meeting will be held?• If I am making a presentation, what audio-visual facilities are

available? Do I know who to contact if there should be aproblem with the presentation facilities?

• Who will keep notes and circulate a written record?• Who will keep a file of the minutes?

Problems with supervision

A variety of problems may arise when supervisors or students blatantlydisregard their responsibilities. Even when both parties have the best ofintentions, problems can and do arise in supervisor–student relationships.Interpersonal interactions almost always pose difficulties of some sort,and it would be surprising if some difficulties did not arise over a three-year period. As with any interpersonal relationship, it is worth stressingthat the supervisor–student relationship is subject to the limitations thatall professional, interpersonal relationships may encounter. Supervisorsare human too and you should realise that they have their strengths andweaknesses. The management of research can sometimes seem easy com-pared to the management of interpersonal relationships. However, manysuch difficulties should resolve themselves satisfactorily; others may not.It is also worth remembering that many supervisors never receive anyrelevant training for such a responsible role. While this does not excuseinadequate supervision, it may help explain it.

Identifying supervisory problems

Problems encountered by research students include the following:

• The supervisor provides an inadequate level of feedback. This is acommon complaint (see Chapter 5 for some suggestions).

• Poor quantity and quality of communication.• Occasional arguments.• Clash of personalities.• Supervisor is not interested in the student’s research.• The supervisor does not know what a PhD requires. • The supervisor has inadequate experience as a supervisor.• The supervisor has inadequate experience as a researcher.• The supervisor publishes the student’s work without listing the

student as an author.• The supervisor treats the student as an efficient or specialised

research assistant, thereby depriving them of a full training to be anindependent researcher (Phillips and Pugh 1994: 25; Plevin 1996:46).

• Bullying, intimidation or sexual harassment (specific institutionalprocedures will usually be in place to deal with these very seriousissues).


Plevin (1996: 46) identifies a number of problems that may arise from asupervisor’s ‘desire to publish and gain prestige in their own fields’:

• Supervisors do not allocate the necessary time for training andsupervision.

• Students are treated as slave labour.• Supervisors put too much pressure on students to produce papers.• Supervisors do not involve the student in the production of papers.• Supervisors push students into more topical areas of research where

the supervisors have no expertise.• Towards the end of the project, supervisors may insist on additional

work being conducted. This may be to produce more publicationsfrom a successful research project, but at the expense of the student’sscheduled completion and submission of the thesis. Alternatively, a supervisor may insist on additional work to compensate for earlierinadequate research, ‘and they blame the shortcomings on thestudent rather than on their own neglect’ (ibid.: 46). Of course, thereare other situations where, despite the best efforts of the supervisor,students either do produce inadequate research or may need toconduct some additional work to be confident of attaining theexpected standard.

The issues identified in this section are certainly not intended to portraysupervisors as a bad lot. On the contrary, the majority of academics arediligent and conscientious supervisors. Others require only a smallamount of nudging by their students to fully deliver their supervisorycommitments. However, there is a very small minority who engage insome of the undesirable or unprofessional practices listed above.

Projects with multiple supervisors

When there is more than one supervisor, there are additional dimensionsto the relationship between student and supervisor. Most often, theseadditional dimensions are only beneficial, with the co-supervisorsbringing their combined expertise to the project.

Occasionally, having more than one supervisor brings a few extrachallenges that may be easily overcome. For example, before makingdecisions, the student may have to evaluate two or more perspectives thatare somewhat different. (This is similar to the old witticism about how aperson with one clock knows the time, while a person with two clocks is


never sure . . . ) On a more pragmatic level, it may be more difficult toorganise meetings between two supervisors who both have busy sched-ules. Other problems include a diffusion of responsibility, provision ofconflicting advice, the student playing supervisors off against one anotherand the lack of an overall academic view (Phillips and Pugh 1994: 110).Unfortunately, there may be rare occasions when multiple supervisionresults in severe problems. For example, supervisors may have personalityclashes that lead to heated arguments or to a lack of any communication(see below). Usually, the benefits of co-supervision far outweigh theoccasional inconvenience, and overcoming such relatively minorchallenges and inconveniences is an opportunity to develop your skillsin management, teamwork and diplomacy!

Generally, when you have more than one supervisor, it is advisable todo the following:

• Maintain contact with the supervisors by holding a joint meeting atthe beginning of the project and at least once a year thereafter.Ensure that they have further telephone communication at leastonce a term (Phillips and Pugh 1994: 111), and regular, scheduledemail contact (especially if one of the supervisors is based at anotheruniversity/research institute).

• Ensure that each supervisor has an up-to-date copy of the projectplan (an outline of the research activities, tasks and projectschedule).

• Ensure that the project plan outlines the scope of the contributionby each supervisor and indicates the area of the research programmefor which each supervisor is responsible.

• Copy each supervisor with all significant correspondence, i.e. insteadof sending an important document to one supervisor only, send it toeach supervisor even if you only expect one of them to respond.

• Inform each supervisor of any changes to protocols, experimentaldesigns, schedules, etc.

Addressing supervisory problems

Having attempted an overview of the problems that research studentsencounter, I hope that you may at least recognise these issues if they affectyou. The specific nature of such problems makes it difficult to providegeneral advice. However, when trying to deal with such issues, somebroad advice may help. First, some issues can be resolved simply by sittingdown with your supervisor and discussing them, albeit with some


diplomacy and tact, e.g. the quality of feedback and frequency ofmeetings.

For more serious issues, you need to proceed more tentatively. Itdepends on the issue, but in most cases it is only fair to first point out theproblem to the supervisor, who then has the opportunity to respond andeither change their practice or justify their position. If problems persistor threaten the quality of your project, then you need to speak to anappropriate person. Sources of help include the departmental coordinatorfor research projects (or equivalent), the head of department, otherpeople with relevant responsibility for postgraduate students or thestudents’ union. Ultimately, it may be necessary to request a change ofsupervisor, although this is certainly not a decision to be taken lightly.Most universities have procedures to arrange a change of supervisor forcases where the supervisor–student relationship is not working.

Conclusion

As soon as possible, discuss with your supervisor your expectations of theirsupervision and the PhD project. Various sections in this book highlightthe important role that your supervisor plays in guiding your decision-making and progress – therefore, effective supervision is dependent oneffective communication between you and your supervisor.

Recommended reading

Publications


See Chapter 7 ‘Interacting with your supervisor(s)’.

Murray, R. (2002) How to Write a Thesis, Maidenhead: Open University Press.


Exercise 2.4

1 Having read this section, can you identify any problems orissues that you need to discuss with your supervisor?

2 List the positive contributions that your supervisor makes toyour PhD project.

See the relevant section in Chapter 2 for a discussion of both the relationshipbetween student and supervisor, and the provision of feedback by yoursupervisor in a way that meets your needs.


See Chapter 8 ‘How to manage your supervisor’.

Online resources

‘Improving Ph.D. student mentoring takes time – do we have it?’ by R. Metzke.http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2002/04/18/6 See also the references at the end of this article.

‘The missing links’ by John Wakeford.http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/postgraduate/story/0,12848,1169926,00.

html Provides accounts of students unhappy with their supervision.

‘Nowhere to turn’ by John Wakeford.http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,5500,557465,00.htmlSome accounts of unsuccessful PhD students.

‘Hard lessons’ by John Wakeford.http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,5500,1037960,00.html An article about unhappy international PhD students.


Chapter 3

Project management

Introduction

New research students are faced with a considerable amount of projectmanagement, yet they may have little prior experience and almostcertainly no training in this important research skill. Upon beginning aPhD programme, most students know that they will ‘do research’, i.e. theyare aware of the expectation that they will design a research programme,conduct research, interpret the collected information, and write a thesis.In addition to this conventional understanding of ‘doing research’ duringa PhD, however, there are many other activities that underpin the organi-sation and successful completion of a PhD programme. For example, youwill very likely need to: plan and co-ordinate the strategic aims, timingand duration of your research tasks; manage your work, time and progress;develop a variety of research skills; plan your career development, and;communicate your findings to the wider research community (see alsoBox 1.3). Thus, it should be obvious that there is more to a PhD projectthan ‘doing research’; there are additional and significant requirementsto define, plan, organise and control a variety of activities. A systematicapproach to these activities is generally defined within the area of projectmanagement.

Project management as a research tool

The high quality of research expected at doctoral level is underpinnedby your imagination, inspiration, motivation and intellect: without these,you cannot make an original contribution to knowledge (see Chapter 1).At the other extreme, an over-abundance of imagination, inspiration,motivation and intellect may provide an undefined and incoherentoutpouring that is impossible to marshal into a specific and manageable

research effort. Thus, there is a tension between creative forces and thepragmatic demands of rigorous research standards. In two very differentexamples, this tension between creativity and discipline is evident in thefollowing:

The price of freedom for all musicians, both composers and inter-preters, is tremendous control, discipline and patience; but perhapsnot only for musicians. Do we not all find freedom to improvise, inall art, in all life, along the guiding lines of discipline?

(Menuhin 1972: 46)

In the end, analysis is but an aid to the judgement and intuition ofthe decision-maker.

(Kerzner 2003: 82)

A project management approach can help provide ‘the guiding lines ofdiscipline’ and ‘analysis’ that direct and channel the creative effort thatis necessary to support the intellectual demands of research of a doctoralstandard. As such, project management is a research tool that helpstranslate your creativity into an effective approach to (a) develop clarityon the strategic objectives of your project; and (b) assist your achieve-ment of the strategic objectives.

This chapter describes and discusses a variety of issues that relate to project management. Throughout the detail, it is always worth remem-bering that project management is a research tool and, as with anyunfamiliar tool, it may take some time and practice before you learn to properly apply it to your needs. However, it is a tool that should serveyour needs, rather than confound them; different people have differentneeds and their use of project management techniques will alsonecessarily differ. Therefore, what is probably most important in thischapter is that you appreciate the strategic approach to research that canbe fostered by adopting the principles of project management.

In the remainder of this chapter, I describe and discuss the role ofproject management as an important part of successfully planning andconducting research, and assessing the progress of a project. The wholesubject of project management encompasses a wide variety of skills andabilities, and has become an applied discipline in its own right. Thischapter introduces some of the basic principles of project managementthat are applicable to research projects. The chapter concludes with adiscussion of responsible conduct in research, with some examples ofnegligence and misconduct.

54 Project management

Project management in doctoral research

Project management: an introduction

People typically associate project management with the very lengthy,expensive and technically demanding projects such as the constructionof spacecraft, bridges or rail systems. However, the very same principlesthat are used so successfully in larger projects can also be applied to muchsmaller projects – including your PhD. Indeed, many (if not most)funding agencies and research institutions use fundamental principles ofproject management both to evaluate research proposals and to monitorthe progress of funded projects. This reliance on project management inboth the academic and industrial research communities illustrates thatknowledge of project management techniques is an important transfer-able skill and is yet another reason for you to understand and implementthese practices in your own research.

Project management: basic principles

For simplicity, I will indicate some of the basic principles of projectmanagement that are most relevant in the context of PhD projects. Anexplanation of some basic terminology is provided in Table 3.1. A typicaldefinition of project management describes it as ‘a discipline of combiningsystems, techniques, and people to complete a project within establishedgoals of time, budget and quality’ (Baker and Baker 2000). Definitions ofprojects and their management place a clear emphasis on three inter-related elements of projects:

• cost (available finance); • quality (the expected standard of the PhD degree);• time (the duration, milestones and deadlines of the project).

These elements underpin the description of a ‘successful’ project as onethat is completed within budget, on time and to the expected standardof quality. For postgraduate research projects, the two elements thatusually take priority are time and quality. Your supervisors should haveplanned a project that is financially feasible, although you will need toclarify whether the costs of your planned tasks are affordable. Moreimportantly, the deadline for your funding is (usually) fixed; therefore,quality will suffer if you run out of time to complete the thesis within the

Project management 55

allotted time, or an extension of the deadline is required to deliver theexpected standard of quality.

There are five main phases associated with the successful managementand execution of a project: initiation, planning, executing tasks,monitoring of progress and completion.

• Initiation includes important activities such as a student’s selectionand application for a project, liaison with a potential supervisor andregistration at a university. These topics are discussed in detail by,for example, Cryer (2000: Chapters 2–5), and Phillips and Pugh(1994: Chapters 1, 2 and 9).

• Planning typically involves a considerable amount of projectdefinition, during which the scope and objectives of the project areclarified. Once the objectives of the project and the research areclear, one can identify the tasks that must be conducted to achievethese objectives. In the project plan or research proposal, one thendefines the variety of tasks, and schedules their timing and duration.As an effective project manager, you need to continuously plan tocope with change and deviations from your original plan.

• Execution of tasks, which requires the majority of the time and effortof the project. This is where the traditional research activities areaccomplished (see Table 3.2). However, other project activities also


Table 3.1 Terminology associated with project management

Term Explanation

Project A sequence of activities designed to achieve a specific outcomewithin a defined budget and time limit.

Goals Describe what is to be achieved.Objectives Provide a specific, measurable description of what is to be

achieved. In research, objectives correspond to researchquestions.

Tasks Describe units of work.Deliverables Clearly defined outputs from the project (the product of

work).Schedule Describes the timing of a list of tasks to be performed.Milestone Defines a time point when a series of related tasks are to be

completed.Deadlines Defines a time point by when deliverables must be produced.Planning Development of a detailed scheme to attain an objective.Project plan A written description of the work needed to complete the

project, including a description of the tasks, organisation and management of the project.

need to be addressed, such as attending training courses, partici-pating in workshops and interacting with other researchers.

• Monitoring of project progress ensures that the timing, cost andquality of the tasks proceeds as planned. In addition to your ownmonitoring and controlling practices, your supervisor should provideimportant guidance. Formal arrangements may also contribute tomonitoring of progress, e.g. formal project meetings, meetings of yourthesis committee, end-of-year meetings, upgrading from MPhil toPhD.

• Completion of the project involves such activities as production of a final report (the thesis), the PhD examination, dissemination of the research findings (publications and presentations), andacknowledging the contribution of others.

There is a typical sequence to these phases, many of which overlap (seeFigure 3.1). A variety of common practices within PhD projects corre-spond to these five phases and represent elements of good projectmanagement (see Table 3.2), e.g. the definition of research questions andhypotheses, the timetabling of various tasks, and reviewing the progressof the research. Presumably, research students conduct these activitiesmost of the time. However, it is important that your conscious recognitionof the interdependence of these activities, and how they assist your progress,should encourage you to actively undertake and co-ordinate these projectmanagement activities during your PhD project.


Figure 3.1 Phases of research projects

time

project start

activitylevels

planning

initiation

tasks completion

monitoring/controlling

project end


Table 3.2 Description of activities that typically occur during a PhD project, and how they correspond to project management practices in different phases of a typical PhD project

Project Management Corresponding activity in PhD projectphase activity/issue

Initiation Initiation Project selection, supervisor selection, interviews, registration.

Planning Definition of Defining research questions that make an objectives and original contribution to knowledge, clearly scope delimit the boundaries of investigation; define

the expected quality (Chapter 1).Project plan Written research proposal/plan; information

on scope, conceptual background; justificationand description of research methodology (Chapter 1).

Task list Details of various tasks and activitiesScheduling Indication of the sequence, timing and

duration of the research tasks (Chapter 3).Deliverables Data sets, analyses, progress reports, thesis

and publications. These must be of appropriate quality.

Milestones Completion of literature review, completion of surveys or experiments, feedback from annual meeting of supervisors and thesis committee, first draft of a thesis chapter.

Management Identifying the roles and responsibilities of supervisor and student (Chapter 2), meetings, achieving agreement and consensus, identifying skills competencies (Chapter 2), and training needs for research and professional development.

Execution of Preparatory Literature review (Chapter 4); details on tasks tasks background, justification and conceptual

framework (Chapter 4), training for specialist tasks, defining the research methodology, pilot research projects.

Main tasks Training for research and professional development; networking and collaborating; ‘doing research’: data collection from surveys,interviews or experiments, the storage, analysis and interpretation of data, writing thethesis and publications (Chapters 5 and 6), presenting your results.

The project management approach: an overview

Exercise 3.1 considers a variety of project management issues in thecontext of your PhD project. Depending on how long you have beendoing your PhD, you will be better able to answer some questions thanothers. The value of this holistic overview is that it demonstrates theproject management ‘mind-set’.

You need to consider wider issues in the goals and objectives of yourPhD project than the research alone: such issues are well represented inTable 3.2. Thus, important project objectives would address not just yourresearch questions but also, for example, attendance at relevant trainingcourses, or a commitment to develop networking relationships with otherresearchers. It is important to recognise the importance and priority ofsuch activities in your PhD project so that they are given appropriatetime and energy.


Table 3.2 continued

Project Management Corresponding activity in PhD projectphase activity/issue

Monitoring Detecting and Monitoring progress; communicating progress addressing (positive/negative developments and any deviation from proposals for change) to supervisors; the the objectives, supervisor and thesis committee will provide schedule or expertise, guidance and feedback (Chapters 2 quality and 5); upgrading from MPhil to PhD.

Completion Produce Editing and proofreading of thesis; submission deliverables of of thesis, undergo viva, finalise publications, required quality publicise the research findings (Chapters 5, and on time 6 and 7).Completion Handover of equipment; archiving of data,

acknowledging assistance, reflection on lessons learned and contribution of the project to your professional development andfuture career (Chapters 1 and 7).

Exercise 3.1

This important exercise encourages a project managementapproach to your PhD project. In answer to each question, quickly

continued


write down three to five main points. Your answers will be usedfor comparison with a later exercise.

Definition of objectives

1 What are the goals of your PhD project?2 What is the justification for and background to your project?3 What are the objectives of your project?4 Are your project objectives SMART*?

Breakdown of work

5 What are the specific accomplishments and deliverables ofyour project?

6 What are the detailed tasks required to produce the deliv-erables and achieve each of the objectives?

7 Are some tasks dependent on the completion of other tasks?8 Estimate the duration of each task.9 Estimate the costs associated with each task.

10 Which tasks are most important? Why?11 Which tasks are most time-consuming?12 Which tasks are most difficult? Why? 13 What are the responsibilities of supervisors or other individ-

uals associated with the project?

Execution of tasks

14 What methodology and methods will be used in the research?15 What specific skills or resources are required, e.g. statistical

analyses, laboratory methods, improved writing skill or com-puter software?

Risk assessment

16 What factors might threaten the successful completion oftasks?

17 How can you minimise or eliminate such impediments toprogress?

There is a significant requirement for PhD students to carefully plan themanagement and execution of the PhD research, as evident from Exercise3.1. The next few sections of this chapter are devoted to project planning,with a discussion of the benefits and practical suggestions to assist theplanning of your project and the monitoring of progress.

An introduction to project planning

In a number of ways, your planning will ultimately guide the practicalimplementation of the research and govern the quality of your researchfindings. The quality of your research is of utmost importance: when yourPhD thesis is examined, the examiners will not inspect the financialbudget for the project and they will assume that the thesis has beensubmitted within the relevant time limits; therefore, the examiners willbe almost exclusively concerned with the quality of the thesis. Suchemphasis on research quality in the PhD examination both explains andjustifies the requirement for effective planning.

Why plan?

Many students skimp on the planning stages of the PhD project;therefore, this section highlights the importance of planning. Most


18 Why do you think some PhD projects succeed better thanothers?

19 What can you learn from successful and less successful PhDprojects?

Monitoring of progress

20 Define ‘progress’ in the context of your PhD project.21 How will you know (rather than relying on intuition) that you

are making satisfactory progress?22 How will you monitor your progress?23 How will you know that you are on schedule?24 How will you know that your work is of appropriate quality?

* Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound

importantly, planning supports the quality of your research in a numberof ways. Proper planning at the beginning will result in more focusedobjectives and a clearer understanding of the demands of the project.Such understanding is important to ensure that your decision-makingand actions are consistent with the strategic objectives of the project.This is especially important when unforeseen circumstances arise,whether they are threats or opportunities.

The PhD project requires a long-term integration of effort, some ofwhich can be quite complex. Planning will help to clarify and managesuch complexity and thereby increase the likelihood of completing theproject. Effective planning will help you to break up a large project intoa series of more manageable tasks that nevertheless maintain a co-ordination towards the main objectives. Such an approach will also allowyou to better identify requirements of the project, e.g. finance, equipment,time, scheduling and research skills.

One important implication is that these planning and managementactivities take time, as well as considerable intellectual effort and dis-cipline. The prominence of methodological concerns in the PhDexamination highlights the thorough planning and forward thinking thatneed to occur before the practical research tasks begin (Chapters 1 and7). Such considerations should convince you not to resent the time thatis spent on planning and on other project management activities; con-sider such time to be as valid a part of your research project as collectingand analysing information, and reporting your research findings.

Some main advantages of planning are that it does the following:

• Reduces the risk of overlooking something important.• Helps you to realise when you have run into difficulties.• Shows you the relationship between your activities.• Orders your activities so that everything does not happen all at once.• Indicates whether your objectives are feasible in the time available.

If not, something needs to change. • Helps you to ensure that the required resources are available when

you need them.• Provides discipline and motivation by indicating targets or mile-

stones, and thus is good for morale as you pass each milestone. Itshows you are getting somewhere! Experience suggests that the best way to successful completion of the project is the successfulcompletion of intermediate stages.

(modified from Wield 2002: 59–60)


The ‘activity trap’

Researchers who do not take sufficient time to plan their project riskfalling into the ‘activity trap’. At the beginning of a research project, itis tempting (and common) to begin doing research as soon as possible.There can be considerable satisfaction in being very busy at such an earlystage of a project. However, such short-term satisfaction is both misguidedand at the expense of longer-term strategic planning:

[At the start of their research], researchers may . . . well want to ‘geton with it’ and not think about apparently obtuse issues of design.Unfortunately, this is a short-sighted view and it is unlikely toproduce research that has instantly recognised merit.

(Trafford and Leshem 2002: 46)

The activity trap confuses being busy with achieving progress. Gettingcaught in the activity trap leads to poor planning and poor integrationof effort. After a few months, when the first phase of activity is completed,a researcher is left wondering what to do next. In the absence of clearobjectives to inform strategic decision-making, the researcher either stopsand does the planning that was originally neglected or, worse still,continues aimlessly on to the next phase of activity. Richard Billowsdiscusses the activity trap further in ‘Project planning: the really creativeand highly political first step’ (http://www.4pm.com/articles/projplan.html).

Your planning will need to incorporate change

It is important to stress that planning is not the same as blueprint-ing. Blueprinting implies an inflexible schedule with a series of tasks that must be completed, without any deviation from the originalschedule. Hopefully, your planning will mean that you will have avoidedor anticipated the major problems, even if minor problems will arise.However, no project goes 100 per cent according to plan, and unexpectedcircumstances may occur that will have a material effect on the decision-making and strategic direction of a project. For example, permission maybe denied to access important information or data; key persons may notagree to an interview or may not return questionnaires; bad weather, pestsor contaminants may destroy experiments or samples. Alternatively, morepositive examples of unpredictable events include an invitation to spendsix months doing your research at another laboratory that has state-of-the-art facilities, or an invitation to speak at a conference. As well as


these external issues, issues may arise that are internal to the project. Forexample, unexpected and apparently important research results from yourwork may suggest a new priority for your research objectives.

The planning of a research project, therefore, must be an iterativeprocess that is conducted throughout the project. Your planning mustbalance the need to work effectively toward strategic objectives with the need to occasionally reconsider whether the original objectives arestill appropriate. A research project needs to be particularly sensitive to how the unfolding investigation of a research question can revealopportunities for new investigation and new research questions:‘Research . . . can, in a very general way, be planned, but not blueprinted.One simply does not know what one is going to discover. Thesediscoveries may lead to a complete change of direction’ (Berry 1986: 5).Be prepared to adapt your research plan, but recognise why this isnecessary, and have good reasons for doing so. In consultation with yoursupervisors, you will identify what changes are necessary, and assess theimpacts of these changes on your project objectives.

Practical implementation of project planning

Lock (1988: 140–1) identifies seven distinct steps in the planning phaseof a project that should be undertaken to establish a work programme:

1 Define the objectives. 2 Divide the project into manageable parts. 3 Decide, in detail, what has to be done and in what sequence. 4 Estimate the duration of each separate activity. 5 Use the estimates of the duration of each activity to calculate the

estimated project duration, and the relative significance of eachactivity to timescale objectives.

6 Reconcile the programme with the resources that can be mustered. 7 Assign tasks to individuals by name. This step is more relevant to

projects with several individuals on the project team. It is likely thatthe PhD student will do most of the tasks, but some work may bedependent on others, e.g. feedback and agreement from supervi-sors, involvement of technical staff or provision of information byindividuals in external organisations.

The rest of this section elaborates on some of the main steps in the aboveframework for planning a project.


Define the objectives

The early months of a PhD programme are crucial in shaping the futuredirection of the research programme. Some PhD projects begin with veryclear objectives and it may be reasonably obvious what experiments arerequired, at least for the first year of the research programme. Otherprojects begin with less-defined objectives, and there is a greater onus onthe student to clarify them. In the case of research projects, it is crucialthat you have clear objectives, which in turn will help to define theresearch tasks that need to be conducted to achieve the objectives. Yourliterature review (Chapter 4) and discussions with your supervisor andother researchers will provide important guidance on your selection ofresearch objectives.

Towards achieving clarity in objectives, project managers attempt to formulate SMART objectives, i.e. objectives that are Specific,Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. These SMARTcharacteristics are further explained as follows:

Specific: the objective is well defined and unambiguous. Measurable: there is a quantitative method for determining if progresstoward the objective is being achieved or not.Agreed upon: the objectives are agreed (with all supervisors, forexample).Realistic: the objective is achievable within the limitations ofresources, knowledge and time.Time-bound: the time required to conduct the tasks is considered andthere is a stated deadline for the achievement of the objective.

The SMART approach is particularly useful for the formulation oftestable research questions. For example, the following four versions of aresearch objective differ in how SMART they are:

• To improve the efficiency of solar panels.• To improve the efficiency of solar panels by 40 per cent within two

years. • To increase the energy conversion ratio of a solar panel of area 1 m2

by 2 per cent within two years. • To improve the efficiency of technology for renewable energy.

The requirement to be realistic is particularly relevant to studentsbeginning a PhD, who tend to be over-ambitious when defining the


objectives. It is much better to conduct a project of more limited scopeto a high standard, than to struggle with a project that involves too muchwork. Thus, the doctoral project should be manageable, and ‘not socomplex that it does not allow for normal PhD treatment and completionin a reasonable time’ (Lawton 1997: 8). The range of activities describedin Table 3.2 is considerable, and indicates that the objectives for the PhDdegree include more than just research. By properly identifying the rangeof skills, demands and components of the PhD research degree, you canbegin to ensure that you address the issues relevant to both your researchneeds and professional development, and avoid neglecting importantissues that you might otherwise encounter by serendipity or not at all. It is worth remembering that all of the typical doctoral activities listedin Table 3.2 are expected to be completed in three years (or theappropriate registration period for your degree). A classic problem,unfortunately, is that many students too often fail to appreciate thebreadth of activities that a doctoral project requires, and often spend toomuch time collecting excessive amounts of data and too little time onthe other aspects, especially the actual writing of the thesis.

It is essential that you meet regularly with your supervisor throughoutyour PhD, but particularly in the early stages of the project to discuss,clarify and agree the objectives. If appropriate, approach other membersof staff in your department who conduct research in a relevant subjectarea. They will almost certainly have suggestions that could help you and direct you to relevant reading. However, it is courteous to informyour supervisor before speaking to others. When requesting help fromresearchers (particularly those in external organisations), be professionaland courteous. It is best to request quite specific assistance from suchresearchers – this indicates that you have already invested time and effortin reading and understanding the subject. Again, inform your supervisorswho you are approaching. When contacting people at other institutions,be particularly careful to portray a professional image – make sure thatyou are prepared, that your questions are clear and concise, and that anyletters/emails are well presented and free of typing errors. Use insti-tutional email addresses and, if possible, make up a business card withyour details on it. Many PhD students have a ‘Steering Group’ or ‘ThesisCommittee’ that is composed of a few individuals (in addition to thesupervisor) whose role is to provide additional guidance and feedback tothe research student.


Divide the project into manageable parts anddecide, in detail, what has to be done and in whatsequence

Taken as a whole, the PhD project is a daunting prospect. It is advisable(and usually necessary) to divide it into smaller, more manageable areasof work. In any case, the splitting of the project into major areas of workfacilitates the identification of the associated accomplishments anddeliverables (e.g. see Figure 3.2). At this stage, consider the specificdeliverables of your project: what tangible output is to be produced from each of your major areas of work so that you know the output hasbeen delivered? For example, a vague aim of ‘professional development’ does not clearly indicate how this aim is to be achieved; however, themilestone of ‘professional development’ in Figure 3.2 will be achievedwhen the student has completed the specified activities that relate totraining, publication, presentation and attendance at various meetingsof researchers. Similarly, the deliverable from a research experiment may be a specific data set, which can then be analysed, interpreted andreported in the thesis.

One very important function of project planning is to provide anunambiguous and detailed written explanation of the research method-ology, which will underpin your research tasks and ultimately determinethe validity, reliability, analysis and interpretation of your research (seeChapter 1). For example, before any practical work is conducted, amethodology for quantitative research should clearly indicate to you and your supervisors the approach to be taken to incorporate researchdesign principles such as replication, randomisation, blocking, indepen-dence, and experimental control (e.g. see the Statistical Good PracticeGuidelines provided by the Statistical Services Centre at The Universityof Reading at http://www.rdg.ac.uk/ssc/develop/dfid/ booklets.html).

Risk assessment

A variety of limitations may present themselves during the course of aresearch programme. It is necessary to appreciate what these might be,and to figure out how to progress with your objectives while incorporatingthe constraints. While it is not exhaustive, the following list indicatessome limitations that might arise:

• How difficult is the project? How much time is required to improveexisting skills and learn new skills (e.g. project management, sam-pling methodologies, seminar presentations, data handling and


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statistics, computer programing and modelling, chemical analyses,interviewing techniques and questionnaire design)? Where can youget the necessary training?

• Do you need technical or specialist assistance with some of theresearch methods?

• How much time is required to conduct and complete the project?• Will permission be required to sample at field sites, conduct inter-

views or analyse data collected by other researchers? • Will permission be required from an Ethics Committee for experi-

mentation involving human subjects or live animals? When does theEthics Committee next meet?

A related and important issue is an assessment of the health and safetyrisks involved in conducting the work. Such assessment is usuallymandatory for laboratory or field work that may involve, for example, useof chemicals, use of equipment with moving parts or visits to remote or dangerous locations. However, health and safety assessments andrecommended practices are also associated with, for example, the use ofoffice chairs and computer screens. Most institutions now provide courseson risk assessment and health and safety, and your supervisor will provideyou with further guidance; you should immediately inform your supervisorof any health and safety concerns that you have.

In addition to these operational risks that are associated with the implementation of work, there may also be risk associated with theprocess of discovery that characterises any effort to make an originalcontribution to knowledge. The most novel, interesting and rewardingresearch questions are those to which we do not know the answer.Therefore, although we can identify such risk, it is perfectly acceptable.The magnitude of the risk may differ considerably, as the answer to somequestions may be guessed quite confidently, whereas the outcome of otherquestions may be truly difficult to guess (and the magnitude of originalcontribution to knowledge is correspondingly higher). Many studentsand supervisors try to spread the risk by undertaking a combination oflow-, medium- and high-risk research. Thus, even if the high-risk researchdoes not go well (as sometimes happens, but even these events can beusefully documented in the thesis), there is the low- and medium-riskresearch to ensure that there is a sufficient original contribution toknowledge.


Planning a time schedule

Full-time PhD studentships are typically for a period of three years, so you have a finite period of time available. Your plan must include a realistic and feasible time schedule, or you risk running out of time,which may result in sub-standard work. Faced with a three-year periodof research, new PhD students sometimes wonder how they are going to


Box 3.1 Vital risk prevention

Every risk assessment should identify the loss of information as arisk. Note that many funding agencies and research institutionsplace a clear responsibility on a researcher to have back-up copiesof their research and data. To lose research data may be considereda form of academic misconduct.

Most research students are quite dependent on their computeras a storage device for research plans, reference collections, data-bases, literature reviews, thesis chapters and draft manuscript.However, computer storage is not 100 per cent dependable: harddrives may malfunction for no apparent reason; an office flood oraccident may destroy your hard drive; office fires are rare, but rareevents do happen; computer viruses can destroy all your work (usean up-to-date virus-checker), and important files can be acciden-tally deleted.

Store a back-up copy in a separate building – if both are kept inthe same building, a fire or flood may destroy both the hard driveand the back-up copy. The back-up copy needs to be regularlyupdated; otherwise, its use as a back-up rapidly diminishes overtime. It is advisable to make a back-up copy of all your electronicfiles on at least a weekly basis. Floppy disks are not reliable storagedevices: zip disks and CDs are much more reliable. Enquire aboutthe possibility of making back-up copies on the local server; this isvery convenient for making daily back-ups of regularly used files(in addition to your back-up copy that is stored at a separatelocation).

Keep your record sheets for the duration of the project at least,but many projects have commitments to keep record sheets formuch longer. Again, keep paper copies of important informationin two separate locations. It is also a good idea to keep paper copiesof electronic spreadsheets that contain your raw data.

keep themselves busy for all this time; however, they soon realise thattime is a precious resource in doctoral research projects.

Planning your time: the bigger picture

Before discussing in detail the duration of different tasks, it is worthlooking at the bigger picture for a few moments. This involves reflectingon the main aims of the PhD as a demonstration of your successfullearning to make an original contribution to knowledge and provideevidence of critical evaluation. In support of these aims, therefore, someof the most important elements of planning and implementation willfocus on issues such as: reviewing, learning and understanding theory;devising questions that test developments in theory; devising researchmethods that are appropriate to the research questions; critically eval-uating the research findings, and writing the thesis to a doctoral standard.These activities require time, but it can be difficult to predict how muchtime. Less obviously, these activities also require a certain state of mind,one that has the opportunity and composure to engage in critical reflec-tion, consider alternative views, debate pros and cons, weigh up issuesand arrive at informed and reasoned judgements. Therefore, in order tohave such opportunity and composure, it is incredibly important that youare not so busy that you literally do not have time to think – to do so isto fall into another version of the activity trap.

Where this discussion relates to scheduling of activities is that youshould not plan for every available hour to be spent on practical researchtasks; indeed, you should leave a substantial amount of your timeunscheduled as contingency for inevitable delays and under-estimates ofthe time required to conduct project activities. Naturally, there will be short periods of days or weeks when you may be exceptionally busyand will be too pressured to engage in reflection – this is quite normal,and these periods represent the implementation of your research plans.However, such bursts of activity are normally interspersed with calmerperiods; students who have to work for several months without any timeto think need to seriously consider the focus and feasibility of the researchobjectives and tasks.

Estimating the duration of major tasks

The feasibility of a project will be dependent on a realistic effort toschedule the timing and duration of various tasks. The use of some formof a time budget is advisable to help raise your awareness of the time


demands of different components of the whole project, and ensuring thatyou forecast an appropriate distribution of time among the different tasks.A common approach is to construct a time budget, which lists the tasksand activities appropriate to your project and estimates the amount ofelapsed time required for each activity (e.g. see Figure 3.3). Obviously, youwill be quite uncertain about some estimates, and it may be useful toindicate both the shortest and longest time that you estimate will berequired (as in Figure 3.3). You can also ask other PhD students for their


Project managementProject scoping and definitionProject planningMeetings and reportingCommunications, e.g. email, phone and letter

The literature reviewDefining the objectivesSourcing and reading the literatureFirst draftRevising and editing

Investigation 1Define research questionsConduct samplingProcess samplesRecord dataData inputData analysis and interpretation

Writing the thesisFirst draftRevising and editingIncorporate feedback from supervisorProofreadingPrinting the thesis

Total

Investigation 2 . . .

Investigation 3 . . .

Professional development

List of major tasks Smallestestimate ofrequired time

Greatestestimate ofrequired time

Figure 3.3 A template of a time budget to estimate the amount of time required to conduct some of the major tasks in a doctoral project

opinion on the amount of time that will be required for various elementsin your time budget.

The following example illustrates how quite rough calculations in atime budget can quickly indicate the feasibility of a research proposal.Consider a research plan that depends on three major investigations. Thefirst investigation will generate about 950 replicate samples (it may helpto think of each sample as a returned questionnaire, or a biological samplethat is examined under a microscope, or some unit of work relevant toyour research). If each sample takes one hour for the associated samplingand processing, then the sampling of this first investigation will require950 hours. Assuming a seven-hour working day (excluding breaks) anda five-day week, this is equivalent to about 27 weeks. Using the sameassumptions and allowing time for holidays, there are about 35 workingweeks per year. Thus, the sampling, and only the sampling, for the firstinvestigation will require more than three-quarters of the year.

However, the calculated 27-week period allows no time for any otheractivities or events that normally occur in doctoral research, such asproject planning, reading, writing, discussing your research with others,responding to emails, reporting on progress, attending training events,illness, entering data to a spreadsheet, analysing the data, part-timeteaching, tutoring, and so on. Therefore, assuming that these essentialactivities will occur, the elapsed time for the first investigation is quitecertain to exceed one year.

With such information, informed judgements can be made. As one scenario, it may be that this first investigation is intended to be apilot study; if so, then it is probably far too demanding and is likely to prevent the timely completion of the more important second and thirdinvestigations. Alternatively, if the first investigation is to be the mostimportant investigation of the three, then it may continue as planned,but the second and third investigations may need to be reduced in size ifthe thesis is to be completed within three years. Another alternativescenario is that the time budget for all three investigations indicates arequired total time of almost five years, and the investigations cannot be reduced in size without compromising their statistical validity (forexample). Then, perhaps only two of the investigations would beconducted, or a decision needs to be taken that the planned series ofinvestigations is not feasible within the allotted timeframe and must beabandoned in favour of a feasible project.


Project planning: how to incorporateunpredictability?

Even for experienced researchers, it is difficult to predict how futureconditions will affect even those projects with clearly defined objectives.In the case of research projects, there is the added dimension that originalresearch involves a process of discovery that will sometimes proceed asinitially planned, but will often provide unexpected outcomes, detectresearch directions that turn out to be blind alleys, and discover researchdirections that may be far more promising than the original ones. I havealready mentioned the need for research planning to be able to adapt andincorporate the variety of changes that may occur during a researchproject, but a criticism of traditional project management (see Figure 3.4)is that it is not sufficiently flexible to cope with such unpredictability (see Austin 2002, ‘Project management and discovery’, available online at <http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2002/09/10/4>). An alternative approach to managing a research project with (to somedegree) unpredictable outcomes is to introduce decision-making atvarious time points. The components of Figure 3.5 provide an exampleof adaptive management that acknowledges and manages the uncertaintyassociated with original research. The project begins (1) with the usualactivities of objective-setting, planning, implementation and monitor-ing of progress. A decision-making process (2) occurs, during which an informed decision is made whether to continue with the original plan (3), or whether some form of modification is required (4). If changeis required, the objective and project management are modified accord-ingly (5), the project implemented, and the progress evaluated again atanother decision-making event (6), and so on. The benefit of adaptive


Exercise 3.2

In Exercise 3.1, you listed the tasks and activities associated with your project. At this point, allocate the amount of elapsedtime that you estimate would be required by each of the tasks andactivities in your project. It is likely that you will be more confidentabout some of these estimates than others. Table 3.2 and Figure3.3 may provide a useful guide, but you will need to construct a time budget that reflects the specific requirements of yourresearch project.

management is that it actively manages unpredictability by eitherconfirming the original objectives (when no change is required) ormodifying the objectives and planning to take account of a change incircumstances (cf. Figures 3.4 and 3.5). In practice, this method enjoyswidespread use in doctoral projects whenever students and supervisors(or Thesis Committees) agree that the current objectives are progressingwell, or that the objectives or research practices need to change whenprogress is unsatisfactory. However, there is rarely an explicit recognitionof this facility to adapt the project to cope with change and discovery.

Of course, adaptive management may be neither necessary nor suitablefor some projects. For others, however, it provides a more responsivereaction to changed circumstances:

Adaptive frameworks assume that the future grows hazy ratherquickly the farther you look into it. They therefore concentrateefforts on a shorter horizon, after which they assume there will be anabandon-or-continue decision and a revision of plans . . . In somecases adaptive frameworks encourage you to just go ahead and trysomething rather than devote a lot of time to detailed planning. Youmay learn more from the experience of trying than you could everlearn by thinking about it in planning.

(Austin 2002)

The latter half of this quote is not a licence for abandoning a strategicapproach to research; however, within an overall guiding framework thatis informed by your judgement and intuition, this ‘give-it-a-try’ approachcertainly corresponds well with the investigative and exploratory natureof original research.


Researchquestion

Researchobjectives

Planning

Implementation

Monitoring

Outcomes

Figure 3.4 Typical stages of a PhD project

Impl

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Another perspective on adaptive frameworks is that they may give rise to two types of planning – outline planning and detailed planning.Outline planning gives an overview of the expected main projectdeliverables and tasks over the full duration of the project (the hazyfuture), whereas detailed planning provides the level of information thatis needed to implement the project within the forthcoming six- , nine-or twelve-month period (the shorter horizon). Most importantly, anoutline plan provides you with a ‘mental map’ of the various activitiesthat occur throughout the PhD programme (such as those in Table 3.2).Such a mental map provides an overview of the integration across variouscomponents of the research and the PhD project – this provides a senseof control that is very empowering (and reduces stress associated withuncertainty). As an example of outline planning, Table 3.3 gives anexample of an outline research plan that a new PhD student has producedfor the first year of their degree, which indicates the main aims for eachtwo-month period over one year (the outline plan for the second andthird year would also be produced by the student). As an example ofdetailed planning, Figure 3.6 demonstrates a schedule of the mainelements associated with specific research tasks to be conducted over asix-month period, using weekly periods. Other associated elements ofdetailed planning would include, for example, a detailed description of the research objectives, the research methods, analytical techniques,and so on. Detailed planning corresponds to the activities within thedashed circles in Figure 3.5.

Note that outline planning is not an excuse for sloppy planning.Outline planning is intended to complement, not substitute for, detailedplanning; a reliance on outline planning alone should not be used tojustify procrastination on the intellectual challenge that is often asso-ciated with detailed planning. You need to begin your project with acommitment to a programme of work for the duration of the project, so that there is a planned ‘default’ project in the event of a decision notto make changes.

For further excellent discussion of research management that facili-tates the unpredictability associated with original research, see Austin(2002) and Portny (2002, ‘Project management in an uncertain environ-ment’, available online at http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2002/ 08/21/3); see also the related articles.


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Determine what resources you will need to get theproject done

Compile lists of equipment, other resources or IT software that you willneed; determine if the equipment is readily available. If not, considerwhether there is an alternative that is available, or ask your supervisorwhether the equipment can be purchased. Often, there are tediousadministrative procedures and delivery delays associated with thepurchase of equipment, so beware and plan your purchases well inadvance of when you need the equipment. To check whether there is asufficient budget for the equipment, consumables, analyses, etc. that youneed, develop an estimate of the costs of materials, analyses, consumablesand equipment as soon as possible. You will need to discuss theseestimates and the expected total budget with your supervisor.

During the course of your project, you will have to rely on many people(apart from your supervisor). You may well be asking technicians forequipment, other academic staff for information, or outside organisationsfor permission or information. It is worth remembering that you needthem more than they need you! Just because you plan to do an experi-ment tomorrow does not mean that other people have time to get youequipment or provide you with information in 24 hours. Early in theproject, therefore, explain to such people what you are doing, and thatyou may need their help. Forward planning at early stages will allow youto make requests for help well in advance – advance notification willusually give your request higher priority when action is required.


Exercise 3.3

This exercise will help you plan the development of your skills,and consider your understanding of important qualities that willunderpin your successful management of your research project.You may wish to refer to Box 1.3 and Exercise 1.4.

1 Identify the research skills that you will need to completeyour project.

2 What skills will you need to develop/improve your ability asa researcher and a project manager?

3 How do you plan to achieve this development/improvement?

Plan to complete the project

It is important that you plan the completion of your PhD project with asmuch attention as you plan both the beginning of the project and theexecution of the research. To use a travel analogy, it can sometimesappear as if the destination of a PhD programme is the place where youare when you run out of fuel. Do not let this happen. The end of yourPhD project (and your funding) is inevitable and you should planaccordingly. A common problem is that students aim to conduct toomuch research, and leave an inadequate amount of time at the end foranalysis and interpretation of the research findings as well as writing,revising and editing the thesis. In such a situation, either the thesis issubmitted on time but is of lower quality than expected, or the writingof the thesis takes longer than planned. Other planned activities mayalso suffer, such as the writing of papers for publication and the pre-sentation of the research findings at meetings and conferences. In thecase of a full-time, three-year degree, it is expected that you complete theresearch and the writing of the thesis in this period – you should not planfor three years of research that is followed by an undetermined period forwriting up.

In the final year of your PhD project, the research content of yourthesis should be relatively clear. At this stage, consider how much moreresearch you need to do to have ‘enough’. Discuss this with yoursupervisor, and it may help to read other PhD theses to estimate thequantity of work that is typical of a PhD thesis in your research discipline.Then, plan the remainder of the year, making a clear distinction betweenthe completion of ongoing research, the initiation of new research, otheractivities (training events or conferences) and the completion of thethesis. Such planning activity should help you devise a realistic schedulefor completion.

Project monitoring

A number of questions in Exercise 3.1 focused on the monitoring ofprogress and were aimed at encouraging you to introduce some objectivityinto an assessment of your progress.

One advantage (and aim) of project planning is that it facilitates (a) monitoring (detecting deviation from the plan); and (b) controllingof progress (dealing with any detected deviation from the plan). Animportant point here is that a more objective method of detecting devi-ation from the plan can be achieved by comparing actual progress with


the planned (expected) rate of progress that is necessary to completewithin the expected time. At its simplest, such monitoring may involvean inspection of the time schedules (e.g. timetables and Gannt charts inoutline and/or detailed plans) to check that deliverables are produced ontime, and to identify where deadlines have not been met. Monitoringprogress, however, is not just about being punctual; it also needs toconsider the quality of the deliverables, and whether the project is withinspending limits.

Where deviation from the project plan is detected, the question arises:What to do about it? The answer to this question will depend on eachspecific situation and whether the source of the deviation relates to time,quality, finance or your professional development; it is difficult to providegeneral guidance, except to say that your supervisor is available to provideassistance. Towards making as informed a decision as possible, it isadvisable to attempt to identify the causes of deviations from the plan,and consider a number of alternative solutions. An excellent discussionof the analyses of problems and decision-making is provided in Kepnerand Tregoe (1997).

To assist your monitoring of progress, therefore, it is important thatyou produce tangible outputs from your planning (e.g. schedules, Ganntcharts, time budgets, etc.), and that you do not simply attempt to try andkeep all this information in your head. By producing documented records,your research plans will be available for monitoring your progress as wellas for future reference and modification – all without the added stressassociated with the risk of forgetting crucial information. Such documentsare also very useful for communicating your plans to your supervisor andothers, and should increase the quality of feedback that you receive onyour planned and actual progress.

Responsible conduct in research

The practical implementation of research will require you to conductsampling and analytical methods that are appropriate to your researchdiscipline. Your supervisor should be an excellent source of guidance on such issues, and most disciplines have numerous relevant books thatshould be consulted for more detail. More generally, responsible conductin research is an important aspect of research culture that underpinsresearch practice and quality, but is an issue that often receives inad-equate attention.

The conduct and reporting of research projects contribute to the advancement of knowledge and the progress of society. Current


researchers trust that previous researchers have conducted and reportedtheir research as accurately and reliably as possible; similarly, futureresearchers will rely on accurate and reliable reporting by currentresearchers. This interaction and the dependence among cohorts of researchers were highlighted by Newton’s famous quote, ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.’ Therefore, afundamental requirement and a basic assumption are that researchersshould make every effort to honestly produce and disseminate infor-mation that is as accurate and reliable as possible.

Despite the importance of responsible conduct in research, these issues are rarely included or discussed in undergraduate or postgraduateprogrammes. At the same time, the pressures on modern researchers tosubmit proposals, win research grants and produce publications createsever more potential for conflict with the values and practices associatedwith the honest conduct of research projects.

An excellent introduction to such issues is provided by The NationalAcademy of Sciences (NAS) in a document entitled ‘On Being aScientist: responsible conduct in research’, available online at http://stills.nap.edu/readingroom/books/obas/. It contains useful discussions, hypo-thetical situations and dilemmas (and some guidance on how to deal with them) that are very relevant to the ethical and professional issuesthat young researchers may experience (see Exercise 3.4 for an example).The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty also provides guidancein its ‘Guidelines for Good Scientific Practice’ (1998), available athttp://www.forsk.dk/eng/uvvu/publ/.


Exercise 3.4

Paula, a young assistant professor, and two graduate students have been working on a series of related experiments for the pastseveral years. During that time, the experiments have been writtenup in various posters, abstracts, and meeting presentations. Nowit is time to write up the experiments for publication, but the students and Paula must first make an important decision. They could write a single paper with one first author that woulddescribe the experiments in a comprehensive manner, or theycould write a series of shorter, less complete papers so that eachstudent could be a first author.

Breaches of responsible conduct in research can be divided intonegligence and misconduct (see NAS 1995), but would not includedifferences in interpretation or honest mistakes (but when a mistake isdetected, it should be communicated to the relevant audience).Negligence occurs when researchers ‘provide erroneous information, buthave not set out from the beginning with the intent to defraud’ (Hammer1992). Therefore, an important distinction between negligence andmisconduct centres on the extent of deception. Negligence typically does not involve premeditated plans to be dishonest. In contrast to anhonest mistake, negligent work can result in mistakes that are less muchforgivable. For example, the pressures on researchers to win researchfunding and produce multiple publications can conflict with the timerequired for designing rigorous experiments, for conscientious workingmethods and for thorough reflection on the interpretation of researchfindings. The undue haste and inattention that can arise from suchpressures will emerge as preventable errors in the research, which willprobably be detected by other researchers.


Paula favours the first option, arguing that a single publicationin a more visible journal would better suit all of their purposes.Paula’s students, on the other hand, strongly suggest that a seriesof papers be prepared. They argue that one paper encompassingall the results would be too long and complex and might damagetheir career opportunities because they would not be able to pointto a paper on which they were first authors.

1 If the experiments are part of a series, are Paula and herstudents justified in not publishing them together?

2 If they decided to publish a single paper, how should the listingof authors be handled?

3 If a single paper is published, how can they emphasise to thereview committees and funding agencies their various rolesand the importance of the paper?

(reproduced from NAS 1995)

See Appendix 2 for a discussion of this example. Further dis-cussion of other scenarios is available in NAS (1995) at http://stills.nap.edu/readingroom/books/obas/

Misconduct is characterised by premeditated and deliberate attemptsto be dishonest. Examples of misconduct include the falsification of data, plagiarism (the presentation of another person’s thoughts or wordsas though they were your own), failure to declare a conflict of interests,the mismanagement of research funds for personal gain and the pre-sentation of other people’s work as one’s own. The improper allocationof credit and recognition has been a source of serious contention in manydisciplines. Breaches of ethical codes of conduct in research are treatedvery seriously (such as may relate to human and animal experimentation).Other ethical transgressions include: ‘cover-ups of misconduct in science;reprisals against whistleblowers; malicious allegations of misconduct in science; and violations of due process in handling complaints ofmisconduct in science’ (NAS 1995).

Such acts of misconduct are extremely serious. They may incurrigorous disciplinary procedures, severely damage a researcher’s reputationor result in a loss of employment. Richard Smith (editor of the BritishMedical Journal) provides a fascinating account of different examples of misconduct in biomedical research in ‘Research misconduct andbiomedical journals’ (http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/talks/physics2/index.htm). This is one of several online presentations concerning responsibleresearch practices, available at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/talks/. Anarticle by Hammer (1992) entitled ‘Misconduct in science: do scientistsneed a professional code of ethics?’ discusses such issues further athttp://www.chem.vt.edu/chem-ed/ethics/vinny/www_ethx.html.

It may sometimes be extremely difficult to decide whether a particularcase is an example of negligence or misconduct; the above categories andexamples are intended to illustrate rather than define different pointsalong a spectrum of conduct. Experienced committees usually deliberateon such issues on a case-by-case basis, and such investigations can involvethe examination of research notebooks, draft publications, finalpublications, and examination of research finances. Interviews withrelevant individuals may be also conducted to determine a person’smotive and degree of premeditation.


Exercise 3.5

Consider the ethical implications of the following scenarios. It may help to consider both the advantages and disadvantages

Conclusion

The doctoral project incorporates a wide range of issues that extendbeyond the direct activities associated with ‘doing research’ to issues suchas professional development, strategic planning, basic administration,meeting deadlines and maintaining a focus on the quality of the research.Project management is a well-recognised approach to organising such complexity to deliver projects on time, within budget and to anacceptable standard of quality. It is a useful tool that provides principlesand strategies that assist your planning, implementation and control of a project in a way that harnesses and disciplines your researchimagination into a format that is consistent with the conventions ofrigorous research.

There is no single right way to manage a project, just as there is nosingle way to mismanage one. By presenting some of the more importantprinciples and strategies of project management, I hope to better enableyou to use your judgement to select the approaches and strategies thatsuit your needs as a project manager and thereby help you adopt one ofthe right ways to manage your specific project.

The project management proverb, ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’is particularly apt for PhD students; the emphasis on research quality inthe doctoral thesis (see Chapter 1) underlines and demands thoroughplanning. It is important, however, that you find the right balancebetween planning and implementation: planning without activity is asfruitless as activity without planning. When implementing your research,


from the viewpoints of different participants in each scenario, e.g.the career of an individual researcher, the research community,funding agencies and the general public:

• Not publishing the findings of a major research project. • Accepting sponsorship from a multinational company.• Agreeing to add your name (as co-author) to a paper that you

have not read.• Losing research data because there was no back-up.

If you are in any doubt about an ethical issue, consult yoursupervisor.

be mindful of your duty to conduct your research in a conscientious andthorough manner that accords with the ethics, values and standards ofthe wider research community.

Recommended reading

Publications

Baker, S. and Baker, K. (2000) The Complete Idiot’s Guide® to ProjectManagement, 2nd edn, Indianapolis: Alpha Books.

Howard, K. and Sharp, J.A. (1989) The Management of a Student ResearchProject, 2nd edn, Aldershot: Gower.

Kerzner, H. (2003) Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning,Scheduling, and Controlling, 8th edn, New York: Wiley.

Online resources

‘Managing Your Research’ by the UK GRAD Programme.http://www.grad.ac.uk/2_2_3.jspIntroduces a number of online resources to help you manage your research.

Project planning and management.http://www.mindtools.com/This website portal links to a number of relevant topics, including projectplanning and management, stress and time management, creativity andcommunication.

‘Scheduling’ by Max Wideman (AEW Services).http://www.maxwideman.com/issacons3/iac1302/index.htmAn introduction to project scheduling.

‘Time management and control’ by Max Wideman (AEW Services).http://www.maxwideman.com/issacons3/iac1301/index.htm


Chapter 4

The literature review

Introduction

Literature reviews are a traditional feature of research and scholarshipthat all postgraduate students will undertake. Having a clear under-standing of your expectations from a literature review will aid yourefficient and effective approach to it and make it more interesting for the reader. This chapter clarifies the aims of a literature review, drawingparticular attention to the role of critical evaluation in literature reviews.Some guidance is provided on how to conduct a literature review, andsome common problems are described.

Literature reviews may be conducted in a number ways by researchstudents, who may interpret and produce a review which is one or moreof the following:

• a list of representative literature;• a search to identify useful information;• a survey of the knowledge base, disciplines and methodologies;• a focus on the researcher’s gain in knowledge or understanding that

is derived from reading the literature;• a specific focus that supports the research being undertaken e.g.

identifying a topic, identifying knowledge gaps, providing a context,deciding on a methodology;

• a written discussion of the literature, drawing on previous investi-gations.

(modified from Bruce 1994: 221–3)

Note that while most literature reviews will incorporate all the aboveapproaches to some degree, the final three points of this list operate ona higher intellectual level than the first three points. These approachesrequire a more active and direct interaction with the review material,

contribute more to the process of learning, and support reasoned organi-sation and evaluation. These more demanding characteristics highlightthe aim of the literature review to contribute to the scholarship of asubject area, which is expanded on in the following section.

Aims of a literature review

From the perspective of your doctoral thesis and PhD examination, thebroader aim of the literature review is to demonstrate your command ofyour subject area, a professional grasp of knowledge and the ability toevaluate your research and that of others. The literature review allowsyou to display your ‘exercise of independent critical power’ that is arequirement of the award of the PhD degree.

A literature review should critically evaluate the literature within a particular research discipline with the aim of underpinning and justifyinga research question. Unfortunately, many students focus on summaris-ing the state of knowledge in their research area; although the role of summary is necessary in a literature review, it is far from sufficient. The review should present an overview of the subject, and its context in the wider research discipline. Thus, the aims, scope, main arguments,underlying concepts, prominent theories and practical applications should be identified and evaluated. The evaluation, or critique, of the reviewed literature is arguably the most important function of thereview. Typically, this involves an evaluation of both the quality of thearguments and the evidence that underpin current understanding.Although intellectually demanding, such critical evaluation affords youthe opportunity to make a novel contribution to the integration andunderstanding of your review subject. Note that these higher-levelapproaches also correspond closely to the issues that must be addressedto demonstrate achievement at doctoral level (Trafford and Leshem2002; see Chapter 7).

From the above, it should be clear that a literature review should offer much more than a mere summary of a body of knowledge. Goodreviews should carry a substantial amount of critical discussion and novel thinking based on the cited work; therefore, simple lists of quo-tations, data or references do not constitute a good review. The followingextract elaborates on the distinction between summary and criticalevaluation:

In notebooks, in newspapers, in handbooks of literature, summariesof one kind or another may be indispensable, and for children in

90 The literature review

primary schools it is a useful exercise to retell a story in their ownwords. But in the criticism or interpretation of literature the writershould be careful to avoid dropping into summary. He [sic] may findit necessary to devote one or two sentences to indicating the subject,or the opening situation, of the work he is discussing; he may citenumerous details to illustrate its qualities. But he should aim to writean orderly discussion supported by evidence, not a summary withoccasional comment. Similarly, if the scope of his discussion includesa number of works, he will as a rule do better not to take them upsingly in chronological order, but to aim from the beginning atestablishing general conclusions.

(Strunk 1918)

In addition to developing, clarifying and creating your conceptualframework, the review should contribute to your search for researchablequestions. Very importantly, your undertaking of a literature reviewshould ensure that you do not repeat previously conducted research, in the mistaken belief that it is original. The review should identifyknowledge gaps, i.e. areas where understanding is limited or non-existent.Of course, some knowledge gaps may not be easily researchable, and thereview may indicate the reasons why. The review may identify existingknowledge gaps that are researchable. Most rewarding, however, is whena review proposes a realistic modification or addition to the conceptualframework of a subject, thereby yielding new knowledge gaps. If feasible,then the PhD research plan will almost certainly be concerned withinvestigating the validity of a proposed change in the understanding ofa subject area.

To summarise, a literature review should not just attempt to illustratemain areas of understanding, but should also point out current areas that are less well understood. Ideally, a review should be able to indicateareas of research that are worthwhile pursuing, but which may have been neglected in the past. Where there are disagreements betweenstudies, some explanation for these disagreements may be provided, ifpossible. The review should also distinguish between the opinions of theperson conducting the review and the opinions from the literature (byreferencing the latter). When reading, be alert for opportunities to dothe following:

• compare results and conclusions by different authors;• contrast results that appear to lead to different conclusions;

The literature review 91

• reassess results in the light of new information that might not havebeen available to the original authors.

(Lindsay 1995)

Conducting the literature review

Have clear objectives

As soon as possible, be very clear on the objectives and scope of thereview. When the objectives of a review are not sufficiently specific from the beginning, you can waste a lot of time pursuing literature andideas that are no longer relevant when you eventually develop morefocused objectives. Given the vast amount of information that exists onvarious subjects, it is necessary to define the scope of the review – thisindicates what will be covered in the review, and what will be excluded.You may identify exclusion criteria that relate to language (Englishlanguage publications only), publication type (peer-reviewed journalarticles only) or content. For an example of the latter, consider thefollowing title ‘The relationship between socio-economic status andattitudes to education’. A definition of the scope of such a review may


Exercise 4.1

This exercise encourages you to clarify and reflect on the qualitiesof a good literature review.

1 Select two reviews that are relevant to your subject area.They may be a journal article, a book chapter, an article in ageneral/popular publication or a literature review from a completed PhD thesis:

(a) Do you think that they are good examples of a review? (b) List the evaluation criteria that you use in making your

judgement.(c) Are there other evaluation criteria that are more

important?

2 For each of the evaluation criteria that you consider to beimportant, identify specific examples of your chosen reviewsthat adopt or contravene these criteria.

consider a number of issues, which include the following: will the reviewfocus on a continent, country or a region? Are you interested in theattitudes of a particular social group? Will the review consider attitudesto primary, secondary or third-level education? If the review focuses onattitudes to third-level education, will it consider undergraduate studies,postgraduate studies or adult education programmes?

You should discuss the objectives and scope of the review with your supervisor, as their experience and insight will be particularlyhelpful. By precisely describing the scope of your review at an early stage,you will make much quicker progress and save a lot of time and effortthat might have been wasted on irrelevant leads. Of course, the objec-tives, scope and any exclusion criteria should be clearly communicatedto the reader. For example, note how the restrictions in the followingextract (from a review of an aspect of environmental policy) clearlyexplain the specific concern of the review:

First, we briefly describe the differences in design and implementa-tion of agri-environment programmes between countries in Europe.Subsequently we review the effectiveness of agri-environmentschemes by surveying all available literature, with the aim of inte-grating the findings of various studies to produce recommendationsfor improvement. We have restricted ourselves to the effects ofschemes on biodiversity. We only consider schemes implementeduntil 2000, as the new modified programmes are too recent for properevaluation. We do not consider set-aside schemes [justificationprovided] . . . and we do not consider the effects of organic farming[justification provided] . . .

(Kleijn and Sutherland 2003: 949)

Relationship diagrams

Relationship diagrams (e.g. spider diagrams, cluster diagrams, mind maps and flow diagrams) are a very useful and effective way of organisingand identifying links between concepts, topics and variables; they arealso useful in helping you to maintain an overview of the differentcomponents of a complex topic. Relationship diagrams are impor-tant because ‘they can summarise complex situations, allowing you toappreciate the complexity while seeing the individual components and the connections between those components’ (Northedge et al. 1997: 71). They convey information that would be difficult to achieve in awritten passage alone, and are excellent for presenting and comparing


explanatory frameworks and conceptual models. Used appropriately, suchillustrations may significantly advance your ‘design, conduct, analysis andpresentation of . . . research in a way that consciously achieves anddemonstrates doctoral qualities’ (ibid.; see Chapter 1).

Relationship diagrams are an extremely useful tool to help clarify andstructure thoughts and ideas at various stages of a study or project.Importantly, the construction of a relationship diagram does not justreflect your current understanding of a research subject; the constructionof a relationship diagram can actively promote your understanding andgive rise to new insights.

As an example, I have used a relationship diagram to present thecomponents of a successful literature review (see Figure 4.1). I used this particular diagram when preparing to write this chapter and foundit extremely useful in clarifying my own thoughts and planning thepresentation of the components that typically constitute a good literaturereview. Figure 4.1 offers a visual summary of the more important pointsof this chapter; therefore, it reinforces the message from the text. Itidentifies three clusters of activities and aims of the literature review, the‘Literature search’, the ‘Conceptual framework’, and the ‘Review ofevidence’. Note that I have structured the diagram so that, in general,the incidence of the higher-level components of the literature reviewincreases from left to right.


Exercise 4.2

This exercise encourages you to use relationship diagrams tostructure and evaluate the conceptual development of yourresearch.

1 Figures 4.2 and 4.3 present information on the nitrogen cyclein the form of two versions of a flow diagram. Compare andcontrast the two versions of the flow diagram of the nitrogencycle in terms of differences in how they convey meaning andunderstanding.

2 As you read research theses and papers, identify examplesthat have used relationships diagrams to better conveyunderstanding.

3 Draw a relationship diagram that is relevant to your research.

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For the purposes of demonstrating the value of relationship diagrams,the subject matter of Figures 4.2 and 4.3 is irrelevant; what is importantis the difference in the level of understanding that is communicated. Bothdiagrams can be used to quickly and succinctly convey information andcomplex connections between different components, in a way that wouldbe difficult to achieve through a written description alone. Figure 4.2 only


Legumes Herbage N Run-off

Soil organic N Soil inorganic N

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LegumesHerbage N

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type, vegetation

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Figure 4.3 Flow diagram of the nitrogen cycle (complex form)

indicates patterns and omits the processes; however, Figure 4.3 providesa semi-quantitative representation (that is achieved by changing thewidth of arrows to indicate the relative importance of different process,and by indicating factors that affect process rates). Comparing these two examples, there is a clear improvement in the number of the com-ponents that are demonstrated, how they interact, and the nature of theinteractions. Overall, there is a progression in the demonstration andcommunication of understanding about the subject matter.

Record-keeping

Over the duration of your PhD, you will manage a significant amount ofinformation, part of which is your collection of references. To avoid thefrustration of not being able to locate or properly cite an important quoteor reference, be meticulous in taking notes, keeping records, constructingbibliographies and referencing.

It is crucial to have an efficient and effective system for cataloguingyour references and notes, and for cross-referencing this catalogue to thefiled copy. Consider how your collection of journal articles and otherreferences will expand; the investment of some time to develop asystematic ordering and up-to-date database of your references will bewell worth the effort. Talk to other doctoral students or your supervisorabout the referencing and filing systems that they use.

There are very useful software packages (e.g. Reference Manager, ProCite or EndNote) that can download references from electronicdatabases, store details of your references, facilitate the construction of a bibliography and implement the required formatting. Given thatformatting can differ across so many journals, this can save much moretime at publication stage than the time required for the initial typing of the reference details. Most universities provide training in the use ofsuch software.

Critical evaluation

The ability to use your judgement and critical abilities is part of yourdevelopment and training as a scholar (Chapter 1). One of the funda-mental activities of a thorough literature review is the critical evaluationof research articles, which may seem as much an art as a science. Never-theless, there are a number of criteria or guidelines that may help you,some of which are presented here.


During the literature review, you will undertake several levels ofevaluation of articles. Evaluations may vary from a brief inspection to assess the relevance of an article to an in-depth critical evaluation thatfocuses on the validity and reliability of the research methodology andconclusions. There are a huge number of published articles availableacross many disciplines, and one important aim is to identify articles of relevance, while quickly dismissing irrelevant articles. The initialinspection of a research article typically encompasses the title andabstract and the nature of the article. The title of an article is the firstindicator of its potential relevance to the aim of your literature review.If the title looks promising, then a quick read of the abstract is worthwhileand should help to further confirm whether the article is relevant or not.Another very important factor is the nature of the article. For example,is it published as a personal website, a professional newsletter, an industry-sponsored report, a government report, conference proceedings, a bookor book chapter, or a peer-reviewed journal article? These types ofpublication tend to vary in their level of reliability and credibility. Forthis reason, the most commonly used type of publication in a review isthe peer-reviewed journal article.

Because they are peer-reviewed, journal articles tend to be moreauthoritative and credible than most other types of publication. However,you need to be careful not to defer to the perceived authority of thejournal, which will result in an uncritical evaluation. Even peer-reviewedjournals vary in terms of their quality. For example, leading internationaljournals tend to have more demanding standards than smaller nationaljournals. Even then, referees may not detect some flaws in a manuscript.Thus, it should be apparent that even for published, peer-reviewedjournal articles you need to conduct a thorough critical evaluation – you are responsible for failing to detect inaccuracies in papers that youreview.

How is the evaluation, or critique, of the reviewed literature con-ducted? Here, I suggest a number of criteria for critically evaluating aresearch paper. Several of these criteria overlap with the criteria used toassess the quality of manuscripts that are submitted to a journal (seeChapter 6). These criteria are by no means exhaustive, but may serve asa useful guide:

Contribution to your review:

• Is the paper interesting and important? If so, why?• Is the main argument of the paper relevant to the scope of your

review?


• Is there a small section of the paper that is relevant to your review?

• Does the paper agree or disagree with the main argument of yourreview?

• Does the paper include a comment, idea or speculation that is ofinterest, and may be worthy of elaboration from the perspective of your review?

• What is the contribution of the paper to the wider research disci-pline, e.g. advances in theory, concepts or methodology?

• What more specific contribution does the paper make, e.g.identification of causal factors or provision of new data?

• Does the paper conflict with findings by other researchers in thediscipline? If so, why?

• How has the research in the paper evolved from previous research?

Research quality of the paper:

• Are the objectives/hypotheses clearly stated?• Is the justification for the research logically developed and clearly

presented?• Is the research put in the context of the research field as a whole?• Can you identify how the research fits into, or makes a contribution

to, a theoretical/conceptual framework?• Is the methodology clearly stated and appropriate to the objectives?• Could the methodology have been improved? How?• Is the statistical treatment adequate and are the data correctly

presented and interpreted?• Are the conclusions justified by the research findings?• Are there alternative explanations that could account for the

findings, and which have been overlooked by the author?• Is the paper sufficiently rigorous, accurate and correct?• Has conflicting evidence been overlooked or ignored?• Does it give sufficient attention to the literature? Are key references

included and are the references up to date?• Are the limitations of the study identified and discussed?• Can you identify additional limitations?

Examples of critical evaluation

The following two (fictional) passages highlight the difference betweensummary and critical evaluation:


Version 1: summarySmith et al. (1997) found no differences in water quality betweenrural and urban areas, whereas Moore and Park (1998) found signif-icant differences. A survey of water quality among ten differentcouncil areas found that water samples in three of ten council areaswere consistently in breach of recommended levels over a one-yearperiod (Townsend 2003).

Version 2: critical evaluationSmith et al. (1997) found no differences in water quality, whereasMoore and Park (1998) found significant differences. However, thefindings of these two studies are not directly comparable because the first study analysed tap-water samples from urban areas, and thesecond study analysed groundwater samples from rural areas. Afrequently cited survey of water quality among ten different councilareas found that water samples in three of the council areas wereconsistently in breach of recommended levels over a one-year period(Townsend 2003). However, the interpretation of comparisonsacross the ten areas is unreliable as it is confounded by a number offactors. First, the sampling effort differed across council areas, as thenumber of replicates from each council area ranged from 45 to 150.Second, the type of analysis different among council areas, as someof the council areas only analysed bacterial content, and others onlyanalysed nitrate levels. Third, slightly different analytical methodswere used by each of the councils, although the effects of thisdifference should be negligible.

Comparing the two versions, it is obvious that version 2 conveys a much deeper methodological insight and provides tangible evidence of critical evaluation, not just summary. As another example of criti-cal evaluation, the following extract discusses academic writing bystudents, and the different and sometimes conflicting advice provided by experts:

Many other writers have offered various suggestions concerningwriting style . . . Although most suggestions seem reasonable,not all are suited to the conceptual article (or thesis). Forexample, I disagree with several of Dorn’s (1985) imperatives:He said ‘Write as you speak’ (p. 513). Oral communication doesnot require the precision of written communication because thespeaker receives constant verbal and nonverbal feedback from


listeners. Thus do not write as you speak; write with exquisiteand exact finesse.

(Salamone 1993: 76)

Whilst acknowledging Salamone’s point, I would think that moststudents would find the advice that he gives – ‘write with exquisiteand exact finesse’ – somewhat alarming.

(Hartley 1997: 97)

The above passage has Salamone critically evaluating Dorn’s advice,followed by Hartley’s critical evaluation of Salamone’s advice. Note how both Salamone and Hartley accept some points before they add their own clarification and interpretation: it is obvious that neitherauthor has blindly accepted the findings of other researchers. Note alsohow both authors make their criticisms; their point is clearly made, butis neither personal nor aggressive.

For high-level examples of critical evaluation in your specificdiscipline, it is well worth inspecting the sections of relevant journalsthat are devoted to proposing, discussing and sometimes rebutting newconcepts and theories. Such sections are often categorised as ‘Forum’,‘Discussion’ or ‘Comment’. It can be especially useful to look at past issuesof a journal to see the emerging discussion, counter-discussion andsynthesis of ideas that are now well established in your discipline.

Structuring your review

Your review should be structured to ensure a coherent and logicalpresentation. A clear organisation of the review material on centralthemes will greatly help the reader and demonstrate your mastery of thetopic. As you prepare your review, be aware of prominent themes aroundwhich the review would be structured. Early identification of such themesallows you to prioritise the relevance of articles. Such themes couldinclude, for example:

• a chronological account of the research subject;• organisation of material about each of the main conclusions of the

review;• methodological developments;• developments in theory and conceptual understanding;• the application of research findings.


Revising the literature review

As a written document, the literature review will involve all the con-ventions and practices associated with writing (see Chapter 5). However,the revision of the literature review is worth further elaboration. For moststudents, a version of the literature review is produced at an early stage.For example, a literature review is usually required for an assessment at the end of year one, or for upgrading. However, as you prepare the final version of the thesis, there will almost certainly be a need to revisitand update the literature review written that was written in early stages,for a number of reasons.

It is likely that you will have different aims when reviewing theliterature at different stages of your research, and your review will needto be updated to take account of these different aims and approaches.Potter (2002: 120) also discusses this:

Your purposes of reviewing literature will change as you progressthrough your research . . . For example, you may be more interestedin understanding the results of a piece of work in the early stages ofyour research, of the research method used once you start thinkingabout your own data gathering and perhaps why there are differencesbetween your results and those in the literature when your data aregathered in.

At the later stages of your research, you will have an improved under-standing of your subject discipline compared to when you first started.Therefore, it is almost inevitable that sections of your review will haveto be modified or rewritten to reflect your improvement in understand-ing as you progress through your project. Approaching the end of yourresearch project, for example, you will appreciate better the strengths orflaws of important papers in your subject; you will have an improvedunderstanding of the theoretical framework that underpins your subjectand how this provides a unifying relationship across different researchpapers; or you will be able to identify new knowledge gaps and newtestable predictions.

An important issue for such revision is to consider the relationshipbetween the existing literature and your own research findings.Obviously, this revision will occur late in the doctoral programme, afteryour research has been analysed and interpreted. Your final revision of the literature review may need to incorporate new advances andpublications of significance, and consider how these relate to existingresearch (including your own). However, you have to balance the need


to keep the review up to date with the need to finish the review andsubmit your thesis – you will not be penalised for failing to refer to anarticle that was published soon before the thesis was submitted.

Common problems of literature reviews

• The objectives and scope of the review are not well defined. Thisresults in a more superficial ‘broad-and-shallow’ approach, ratherthan the more focused and desirable ‘narrow-and-deep’ approach.

• There is too much emphasis on summary, and insufficient attemptsto either critically evaluate the research material, or provide anoverview/synthesis. Remember, your own understanding and evalu-ation should be evident throughout.

• Important conceptual developments are either not referred to or theyare explained incorrectly.

• There is limited scope in reading material, with over-reliance on alimited range (and/or quality) of references.

• Older seminal papers and recent important research are not referredto.

• There is an over-reliance on websites and general textbooks(although this is less common in postgraduate research). In increas-ing order of priority, reviews should focus on academic textbooks,journal review articles and original journal articles.

• There are numerous, obvious mistakes that indicate inadequateproofreading. For example, typographical errors, poor grammar,repeated sentences or paragraphs that have been ‘pasted’ more thanonce; references in the text are absent from the bibliography, andvice versa.

Recommended reading

Publications

Chambers, E. and Northedge, A. (1997) The Arts Good Study Guide, MiltonKeynes: Open University Press.

This book discusses how to get the most out of reading, analysing and evaluatingtext, and how to improve your writing. Provides lots of case studies andexamples.

Hart, C. (1999) Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science ResearchImagination, London: Sage.



Online resources

Trent Focus provides a variety of resources for researchers.http://www.trentfocus.org.uk/ In the ‘Resources’ section, see ‘Carrying out a literature review’, ‘Managingreferences’, ‘Critical evaluation of research’ and many other useful guides.

Teaching And Learning at the Environment-Science-Society Interface(TALESSI). http://www.gre.ac.uk/~bj61/talessi/

Go to: Teaching and Learning Resources (TLRs)Go to: Index of TLRs and authorsSee: 1. Bibliographic citation for authoritative academic writingSee: 3. Evaluating the credibility of knowledge claimsSee: 32.Virtual climate change: critical evaluation of internet sources.

‘PhD: first thoughts to finished writing’ by Katherine Samuelowicz, LesleyChase, and Mandy Symons, Learning Assistance Unit, University ofQueensland, Australia.

http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/phdwriting/

‘How to write a PhD thesis’ by Joe Wolfe, The University of New South Wales.http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/thesis.html


Chapter 5

Writing the thesis

Introduction

Effective writing is an essential research skill and requires an ability toexpress your thoughts with clarity, conciseness and some style. PhDstudents usually have a degree of proficiency at writing, but, unfor-tunately, there are often implicit assumptions that they are accomplishedwriters who are automatically able to complete a thesis of about60,000–80,000 words. The PhD thesis is likely to be the single largestwriting activity that research students have undertaken, and larger thanmost people will ever undertake. Yet, research students rarely think ofthemselves as writers, and there is not always much support to helpstudents develop their writing abilities.

The PhD thesis incorporates issues of research content, structure andstyle:

• Research content is concerned with such issues as originality, theconceptual framework, methodology, achievement of the objectives,and correct analyses and interpretations.

• Structure involves appropriate location of different sections of thethesis, logical sequencing of ideas, as well as presentation andformatting of the thesis to the required standard.

• Style is a matter of writing with conciseness and clarity, and carefullyusing the rules of grammar.

(modified from Peat et al. 2002: 8–9)

The writing process must address all issues of content, structure and style.A major focus of this chapter is the importance of a well-structured thesisin aiding the PhD examination, along with a description of some of themany activities that contribute to the writing process. I discuss the

importance of writing as an aid to developing understanding, and theneed for planning and revising of written text. I provide an overview ofthe thesis as a document that makes a determining contribution toexamination and assessment for the PhD degree and the necessity for thethesis to meet the examiners’ expectations. Some of these expectationsare elaborated on in the section on the presentation, structure and refer-encing in the thesis.

A detailed discussion about academic writing is beyond the scope ofthis book, but there are references to some of the many other books andonline resources that provide detailed information on writing, completewith writing strategies, case studies and examples of good and poorpractice.

The process of writing: an overview

This section discusses some of the main functions and activities associatedwith writing. It deals with broader issues such as how the act of writingcan be instrumental in improving understanding, and a description ofimportant activities such as planning, drafting, revision and feedback.The section concludes with a short discussion about the completion stageof the thesis.

Writing cultivates understanding

Writing is important to develop and clarify your understanding. This may seem strange, as many people believe that their thoughts and ideasneed to be fully formed before they begin to write. However, this is notalways the case: when we write, and as we write, we often develop ourunderstanding of a topic:

[W]riting about more abstract topics is generally difficult, especiallyif we do not fully understand the ideas we are writing about. . . . [T]hevery process of struggling to write about ideas is often clarifying andcan promote deeper comprehension.

(Veroff 2001: 203)

If it is the case that writing leads to discovery, and not, as is generallysupposed, that discoveries merely need to be put into writing, thismay in part account for the experience of writing the thesis as themost difficult part of the work.

(Phillips and Pugh 1994: 65)

106 Writing the thesis

Obviously you don’t formulate what you’re going to say completelyuntil you come to write it down . . . it was only when I was writingit that I realized that in one section my interpretation was completelywrong. The point I was trying to make just wouldn’t embody itselfverbally, so I thought it out again and rewrote the whole section.

(research student, quoted in Phillips and Pugh 1994: 67)

Clearly, then, writing achieves more than a careful and accurate recordof what you understand before you write: writing improves and transformsyour understanding while you write. It is the struggle to express yourthoughts in words that will force you to consider your selection of themost appropriate words, to best describe meanings and to create logicalconnections between sentences and meanings. This struggle representsa ‘no pain, no gain’ principle for writers! However, the gain is improvedunderstanding – a fundamental goal of your doctoral research.

If you accept that writing improves understanding, a number ofimplications follow. First, do not wait to be ‘inspired’ before you begin to write. A common experience of many PhD students (and many otherresearchers) is that they often only become inspired while they write, in the moments of writing when they struggle to clarify and expressthemselves. Second, you should start writing from early on in your PhDprogramme. If writing is an active tool in the clarification and develop-ment of your understanding, then it contributes to high quality research.Thus, do not simply relegate the writing of your thesis to the last sixmonths of your programme – otherwise, you will miss out on the fullbenefit of writing for understanding. These sentiments are implicit in a statement by Murray and Lowe (1995: 103): ‘Writing . . . is often seenas the final stage of the PhD process – writing up – rather than as adevelopmental activity which can be used through the whole researchprocess.’ A third implication is that you need to write regularly. Regularwriting greatly helps research students to improve their confidence,quality of writing and understanding of their subject. Fourth, you mustschedule time for writing (and for learning about writing).

Writing the thesis 107

Box 5.1 Characteristic strategies of productive writers

Most productive writers:

• Make a rough plan (which they don’t necessarily stick to).

Planning, drafting, revision and feedback

Planning

A common approach to the planning of writing is to draft major sectionheadings, followed by sub-section headings and then a few notes on thecontent of each paragraph in the subsections. At this stage, an outline of the chapter (for example) will begin to emerge, and you can start to consider the sequence of major sections. As you refine the logicalstructure of the chapter, you will become more engaged with the materialand decisive about the relevant theme, which becomes a basis fordeciding on the inclusion or exclusion of content. The first draft of thechapter then becomes a matter of expressing the main messages of eachof the relevant paragraphs.

‘The beauty of outlines’ by Liane Reif-Lehrer (available at http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2000/06/07/2) provides furtherexcellent discussion, and the related articles are also very useful. The useof relationship diagrams is also a useful tool to assist with planning (seeChapter 4).

Throughout your doctoral research you will be engaged in criticalevaluation of others’ work; as well as gaining new knowledge, you willalso gain new insights and ideas. These are the insights and ideas thatwill demonstrate your mastery of the topic and original contribution toknowledge – and will form the basis for a lot of written text. Therefore,keep a written record of them in a research journal or a folder. The veryact of writing them down will help to develop them further and you willbe creating a store of writing that can contribute to your thesis.


• Complete sections one at a time. (However, they do notnecessarily do them in order.)

• Use a word-processor.• Find quiet conditions in which to write and, if possible, write

in the same place (or places).• Set goals and targets for themselves to achieve.• Write frequently – doing small sections at a time – rather than

writing in long ‘binge sessions’.• Get colleagues and friends to comment on early drafts.• Often collaborate with long-standing colleagues and trusted

friends. (Hartley 1997: 101)

Drafting

One reason why research students (and others) feel daunted by writingis the pressure to get a piece of work to a high standard at the first attempt.Permitting yourself to produce draft versions of lower quality is veryimportant in reducing this pressure:

Early stages, early writings and early drafts will surely lack the qualitywe expect in the final polished product. Writing that is sketchy,incomplete, tentative and downright wrong is an inevitable part ofthe research and learning processes . . . While we know that we arenot expected to produce high-quality writing – and thinking – in ourfirst, or ‘rough’ drafts, we have internalised the expectation of highquality writing. This can present writers with a conflict. It can stopthem writing anything.

(Murray 2002: 6, 24)

Most writers rely on the iterative process of drafting, rewriting andrevision. The first draft of a document, no matter how rough, is valuedfor generating text and providing (or suggesting) an outline of thecontent. By forcing the writer to grapple with the issues, first drafts helpimprove one’s understanding of the topic and help a writer to identifyissues and text that are not yet contained in the text, but should be. Most importantly, such drafts create a document that can be revised andimproved. The message is simple: get the first draft written.

In recognition of the importance (and difficulty) of producing a firstdraft, many educational researchers and providers of writing courses stressthe role of freewriting (e.g. Elbow 1998; Murray 2002). Freewritingadvocates the generation of text that expresses your feelings and positionon a topic; it is not concerned with accuracy, editing, grammar, audience,style, or coherence because such concerns can inhibit your writing. Themethod of freewriting is to generate text through non-stop writing for ashort period of time (e.g. 10 to 15 minutes); however, the value of thismethod is its insistence on turning off the ‘internal editor’:

Think of the difference between speaking and writing. Writing has the advantage of permitting more editing. But that’s its down-fall too. Almost everybody interposes a massive and complicatedseries of editings between the time words start to be born into con-sciousness and when they finally come off the end of the pencil ortypewriter onto the page . . . But the opportunity to get [words] right


is a terrible burden: you can work for two hours trying to get a paragraph ‘right’ and discover it’s not right at all. And then giveup . . .

Editing, in itself, is not the problem. Editing is usually necessary ifwe want to end up with something satisfactory. The problem is thatediting goes on at the same time as producing.

(Elbow 1998: 4–5)

Guilford (1996, www.powa.org) points out that novice writers ‘are toocareful and self-critical at the start of a project’ whereas more experiencedwriters ‘write quickly, accepting chance discoveries, trusting hunches andgut-feelings, willingly making mistakes’. Again, Guilford’s commentshighlight the benefits of separating the processes of producing text andediting it. Therefore, freewriting is a useful strategy that addresses yourneeds as a writer to generate text; it allows writing that is intuitive,creative and exploratory, and allows you to think while you write withoutdistraction from your internal editor. Freewriting is not concerned withthe accuracy, clarity and purpose that we associate with improved drafts,and is not concerned with the needs of the audience. Such issues are thebusiness of revision and editing. In my experience, I have produced myworst writing while freewriting, but it was relatively easy to improve thissubsequently; interestingly, and more importantly, I have also producedmy best writing and insights while freewriting.

Freewriting is not a panacea for all writing, and it may be more appro-priate to think of it as one of several writing practices, some of whichmay be more suited than others to a particular situation. For example,when you are writing about more familiar topics, then you may have aclear outline and structure in mind that make it relatively easy to write.However, the original and demanding nature of doctoral research makesit likely that the latter situation will arise on many occasions and youshould consider using freewriting as one of your main tools for quicklygenerating early drafts. Alternatively, freewriting can be very useful whenyou are struggling to express a new idea, or finding it difficult to writeanything at all – at the very least, be willing to try freewriting then.

Revising and editing

Written work needs to be revised on multiple occasions. This is inevitablewhen you accept (correctly) that a piece of writing cannot be perfect atthe first attempt. In this section, I highlight some of the different practicesthat contribute to the revision and editing of a text.


Experienced writers employ different revision practices from novices.Compared to novice writers, experts address more global problems withstructure, are better at detecting problems, and are better able to addressthese problems (Fitzgerald 1987: 490, in Hartley 1997: 102). Similardifferences in revision practices are also evident in the following:

[E]ach time you revise, you find new potential in the evolving text.Too often, inexperienced writers don’t see this potential. They aretoo careful and self-critical at the start of a project and too easilysatisfied toward the end. Having agonized through a first draft, theyquickly check for grammar and mechanics and consider themselvesdone.

More experienced writers usually do just the reverse. Early on, theywork at discovering what to say, getting their ideas out onto disk orpaper. They write quickly, accepting chance discoveries, trustinghunches and gut-feelings, willingly making mistakes. Gradually,though, they feel a need to look back over their work, to ask whetherit makes sense, how their readers will respond. Thus begins theprocess of revision. Spotting grammatical and mechanical problemsis only a minor concern here. Much more important is the need tosee the big picture, the overall effect.

(Guilford 1996)

Identifying some of these differences in editorial practice between noviceand expert writers also helps to illustrate several different types of editing.The editing process can address issues in the text across different levels,much like the use of a zoom lens: at low magnification, editing mayconcern chapters, sections and paragraphs; at high magnification, editingmay involve the grammar of individual sentences. Here I describe someof the variety of revision practices.

For novice writers, such as most PhD students, there is a wide varietyof revision practices to be conducted. For simplicity, I distinguish herebetween revision of the research content and editing. First, revision ofthe research content involves a critical evaluation of the conceptualframework presented in the thesis, and an effective communication ofthe research quality and doctoral worth of the thesis (see ‘Expectationsof the examiners as examiners’, on p. 120). For example, this revision ofyour own work allows you to improve your understanding of the material,and lets you ‘find new potential in the evolving text’ (Guilford 1996).

Second, editing in the more traditional sense involves issues such asstructure, grammar, punctuation, and spelling:


• Global structure: concerned with improving the structure and logicalsequence of the document, typically involving decisions on sequenceof chapters, sections and paragraphs. Identifies linkage betweenrelevant sections.

• Layout and presentation: improved by use of typographical techniques,forecasting, signalling and signposting.

• Formatting: checking references, compliance with universityguidelines.

• Clarity of meaning: such as word selection, sentence structure andremoving ambiguity.

• Style: achieving accuracy, clarity and conciseness.• Grammar, punctuation, spelling, typographical errors.• Other issues: e.g. mathematical or scientific notations; presentation

of figures, tables and their legends; presentation of statistical results;accuracy of calculations.

The aim of this list is not to provide an exhaustive description of editingpractices, but to heighten your awareness of their variety. Importantly,many different skills need to be implemented all at once when we reviewtext, if the text is to be edited effectively. Given this multitude of criticalassessments of text, perhaps it is not surprising that novice writers do not always engage the full repertoire of editing practices – perhaps theyare not even aware of this variety? Unless novice writers have learnedotherwise, it is understandable (although not excusable) that they‘quickly check for grammar and mechanics and consider themselves done’(Guilford 1996). Until you become more experienced and confident in your editing skills, one way to ensure that you engage the full reper-toire of revision and editing practices is to review the text and focus on one editing skill at a time. Therefore, at the first reading you reviewthe research content; at the second, the global structure; at the third, the layout and presentation; and so on. This approach has the addedadvantage of deciding at an early stage what material needs to beexcluded, which saves time that might otherwise have been wasted onfine-scale editing of material destined not to appear in the final thesis.

Global structure

One of the above editing issues, global structure, is worth discussingfurther. In recent years, the DVD version of many films provides anoption to listen to commentary from the director. Such commentarytypically provides a rare insight into the tension between the creative


process and the need for discipline in editing the global structure of thefilm (see also Chapter 3). It is fascinating to hear directors explainingtheir decision-making both when including certain scenes, and removingothers from the final version. The agonising of directors is palpable whenthey decide to cut certain scenes (that were expensive and time-consuming to produce) because they are not relevant to the storyline, aretoo long, are distracting, or because they slow down the pace of the filmtoo much. Sometimes, such decisions can involve major changes instoryline.

Similarly, you are the director of your thesis. You must make decisionssuch as what to include and exclude in your thesis, in what order thechapters should appear, and the outline and sequence of sections in eachchapter. When evaluating your text, aim to identify whether the existingsequence and content of sections are best structured to maximise thereader’s understanding. It is likely that not all of your research will appearin the thesis, and hard decisions sometimes need to be taken: somesections may need further explanation or elaboration while others mayneed to be deleted. For example, it may not be appropriate to include the detail of some pilot experiments, especially if such experiments had methodological flaws that were detected and removed in subse-quent, improved experiments. It may be sufficient to mention that themethodology was improved after conducting pilot experiments (studentsattending a viva should be prepared to expand on the role of the pilotexperiments as a learning experience). Some students do not includesome perfectly good research theme in their thesis because it is notconsistent with the rest of the thesis – it does not support the storylineof the thesis (such research may be published in a journal at a later stage).Of course, the omission of careful research just because it does not providedata that support your argument is unethical – and may be an importantoversight: ‘if experienced observers, taking all possible precautions, foundthemselves confronting an anomaly for which they could not account,they were probably “on the verge of some important discovery” ’ (Keay2000: 121). In any event, such decisions will be situation-specific andyour supervisor will provide guidance.

In practice, revision and editing tend to be most effective when youput a document aside for some time (perhaps a few days) before re-readingit. This ‘detachment’ from your writing will help you to be more criticalof it. Rather than working from the computer screen, it may help to reviseand edit a printed copy of your text – this can be particularly effectivewhen trying to identify and resolve global problems in the text. Whenrevising and editing, it is generally more efficient and effective to work


systematically through the text. Flitting through the text, tweaking asentence at the beginning, at the end and then in the middle, is, at best,a form of procrastination that leads to easier editing practices beingcompleted while treatment of more serious issues is delayed or, evenworse, never happens.

Feedback

An important aim of writing is for written words to communicate aparticular message to the mind of the reader. After an appropriate amountof revision and editing, the best way of ensuring the achievement of thisaim is to get someone to critically read your work. Feedback may identifywhere your writing style may need to be improved, whether some sectionsare difficult to understand, where contradictions occur or where theglobal structure might be improved. Don’t take such criticism personally,although this is easier said than done; it may help your confidence to also ask about positive elements in your writing. It is important to ask your reader some questions that probe their understanding of theresearch content, just to check that their interpretation corresponds tothe intended message. Try to receive criticisms in a spirit of gratitude:such feedback prevents a wider audience from detecting shortcomings inyour writing.

More than likely, your supervisor will be a major source of feedbackon your written work. You should both discuss the importance of effectivewriting and agree on the type of feedback that you need to improve yourwriting, and consider when and what types of feedback may be appro-priate to the different types of writing that you produce (see Exercise 5.1).


Exercise 5.1

This exercise helps you to consider your expectations and needsfrom feedback on your work (writing, progress, research quality).

1 Before you submit written work to your supervisor:

(a) Do you forewarn your supervisor that you will be sub-mitting work?

(b) Do you indicate the (approximate) amount of work to besubmitted?

Ensure that your supervisor has ample time to read the thesis; otherwise,you will miss out on one of your single best sources of feedback. Do notput yourself, your supervisor or your thesis in a situation where thesupervisor receives (without warning) the thesis content for the first timeabout ten days before the submission deadline (amazingly, there areinstances when this occurs).

It may also be very rewarding to discuss the writing process with otherresearch students: How do they recognise good writing? How do they


(c) Do you indicate by when you would like to have feedbackprovided?

2 When you submit written work to your supervisor, do youindicate what kind of feedback you are looking for?

(a) Do you indicate whether the feedback is requiredurgently or not?

(b) Are you specifically looking for comment on the researchcontent only?

(c) Are you specifically looking for feedback on the qualityof your writing?

(d) What balance do you expect between feedback onspelling and grammar, and feedback on the structure,logic and argument of your research?

(e) Which of the various editing practices (research content,global structure, layout and presentation, clarity ofmeaning, and so on) would you like your supervisor tofocus on?

(f) Do you communicate these expectations to your super-visor?

3 On receipt of feedback, what do you do?

(a) Do you understand the feedback (written or oral) thatyour supervisor provides?

(b) When your supervisor provides feedback, are you clearabout the criteria that they use to evaluate your work?List the criteria that you think they should use.

attempt to improve their writing? What writing strategies work best forthem? What feedback has helped their writing? How do they structuretheir thoughts as part of the writing process? What difficulties do theyencounter when writing? What strategies do they use to overcome theirdifficulties?

Of course, your supervisor is not the only source of feedback availableto you. Experienced writers tend to identify a ‘critical friend’ who iswilling to read successive drafts of their work and provide constructivecriticism and feedback (Hartley and Branthwaite 1989). If possible,identify a fellow research student who is willing to be a ‘critical friend’,and for whom you can return the favour. Indeed, once you get over anypersonal inhibitions about providing face-to-face feedback, the criticalreading of other’s work is a very powerful technique for learning toimprove your own skills of editing and critical evaluation (Caffarella and Barnett 2000), as well as engaging in academic discourse (whichcontributes to preparation for an oral examination). An added advantageis that fellow students acting as a ‘critical friend’ will tend to return yourwork and provide feedback more promptly than your supervisor. Theymay also bring your writing up to a higher standard before submitting itto your supervisor, thereby allowing your supervisor to focus on moresubstantive issues of research content and global structure instead ofeditorial or formatting issues.

Completion of the thesis

The PhD programme is for a finite period, as is your funding. Therefore,there will come a point when you have to finish. For some this may berelatively easy, as experiments and surveys have been successfully com-pleted. For many others, there may always be more research to be done– more literature to read and another experiment or survey that couldclarify an issue. For others with an inclination to perfectionism, theremay always be more improvements to be made when writing the thesis(see ‘Thesis-writing for perfectionists’ at www.services.unimelb.edu.au/llsu/pdf/otherpdfs/other009.pdf). As pointed out in Chapter 3, you needto plan the completion of your thesis as carefully as you did the designand execution of the research. As previously stated, to use a travel anal-ogy, it can sometimes appear as if the destination of a PhD programmeis the place where you are when you run out of fuel! It is difficult toprovide general advice, but your supervisor will be an important sourceof guidance about whether you have conducted enough research andwhether your thesis is of an acceptable standard for submission.


Murray (2002: Chapter 9) provides some further discussion on judgingwhen you have done enough. She stresses that the thesis does not haveto be perfect or brilliant but simply has to be ‘good enough’ forsubmission:

Your work is good enough when:• your argument and conclusions are plausible, even if you are not

completely happy with them;• your argument is convincing and coherent;• you have made a recognisable contribution to knowledge, even

though you feel it is not earth-shattering;• you have made this visible in your introduction, conclusions and

abstract, using the word ‘contribution’ or something very likeit;

• you have achieved some or all of the aims that you set out toachieve in your research and have reported this in your thesis;

• feedback from your supervisor indicates that your work isadequate;

• you have had publications – or even one – drawn from yourresearch/thesis.

(Murray 2002: 237)

The above points focus on the quality of the thesis, which is theoverriding concern (see Chapter 7). Some students worry whether theirthesis is long enough; however, any reader will prefer a thesis that doesnot have long, vague passages of text. Consider also the following (ratherextreme!) example of the prominence of quality over quantity in the PhDthesis:

Einstein completed his thesis at the end of April 1905, but he didnot formally submit it to the University of Zurich until 20 July. The21-page paper was soon accepted, although according to Einsteinhimself he was initially told that the thesis was too short; he addedone sentence before resubmitting it, when it was promptly accepted.

(White and Gribbin 1994: 80)

The written thesis is the prime focus ofassessment

For examiners reading the PhD thesis and writing their examiner’s report,first impressions count. From the moment the PhD examiner opens the


envelope containing your thesis, they are consciously and unconsciouslyjudging and assessing your thesis. Their first viewing of the thesis will bethe title on the front cover, and their initial inspection of the thesis willtake in the title page, the table of contents, the line spacing, font size,paragraph lengths, number of figures and tables, referencing style and, ofcourse, the length of the thesis. Therefore – and this is a crucial point –it is your responsibility to write, structure and present the written thesisin a way that convincingly demonstrates research at doctoral level.

First impressions last

The reading of the thesis primarily determines the decision-making of the PhD examination. While this statement obviously applies inuniversities where a viva is not normally conducted, it also applies wherea viva is usually conducted. A survey of UK universities found thatexaminers in the non-sciences (arts/humanities/social sciences) typicallydo not change their opinion of the thesis that is formed before the viva:

Forty per cent of examiners . . . said that the decision about the thesiswas made before the viva. In 74% of cases the viva served merely toconfirm the examiners’ opinions of the candidate . . . Where the vivadid influence the examiners, this did not necessarily influence theexaminers’ decision.

(Jackson and Tinkler 2001: 361)

Of course, the examiner’s opinion of the thesis includes the content andquality of the research (discussed further in Chapters 1, 6 and 7). Butissues associated with structure and presentation also significantly affectthe examiner’s overall opinion of the thesis, not least because such issuescan profoundly improve the communication and comprehension of yourdoctoral research. Therefore, the examiner’s first impression of the thesisis not simply achieved by the provision of a superficial ‘polish’: a positivefirst impression is achieved when the examiner detects the moresubstantial structural and presentational cues that will aid their readingand understanding of your doctoral research findings. For example:

Never underestimate the importance of the presentation. No thesiswith inadequate content will be accepted; but many theses, wherethe content is adequate, are dragged down into the borderlinecategory by poor presentation.

(Pratt 1984: 1114)


[T]he impression which examiners reach about the merit of adoctoral thesis is initially gained from the textual content and thepresentation of the thesis.

(Trafford and Leshem 2002: 39)

Not surprisingly, examiners are negatively influenced when a thesis is notpresented to a high standard:

Examiners quickly become annoyed and distracted by spelling,typographical, grammatical and referencing errors . . . One of theproblems with work that is poorly presented is that the examinertends to lose confidence in the candidate and can become suspiciousthat there are deeper problems of inadequate and rushed conceptu-alisation.

(Johnston 1997: 344, 345)

I give my students strong advice on how not to flip an examiner from being reasonable to unreasonable by having irritating things in the thesis such as typos and other careless textual mistakes thatindicate lack of attention to detail. Once flipped (and I am aware of this happening), I am irritated and I have to work very hard atovercoming this irritation and not letting it influence my view of thethesis, although this is not easy.

(PhD examiner, quoted in Mullins and Kiley 2002: 378)

Examiners will base their assessment mostly on the research content ofthe thesis, but they need the research findings to be communicatedadequately. Although a poorly presented thesis (that includes researchof doctoral standard) is unlikely to result in a fail, it is certainly not inyour interest (especially in borderline cases) to have presentationalmistakes that ‘flip’ an examiner or lead them to suspect ‘that there aredeeper problems of inadequate and rushed conceptualisation’ (Johnston1997: 345).

Expectations of the examiners as readers

Thinking about the audience for your thesis highlights the role of theexaminers as readers of the thesis; this challenges you to both considerand satisfy the needs and expectations of the examiners as readers.Statements in the previous section make it clear that examiners can benegatively affected by the presentation of the thesis: their expectations


were not fulfilled. That the PhD examiner (or any other reader) has needsand expectations as a reader may not be immediately obvious:

[T]he examiner approaches the reading of a thesis just like a readerof any new piece of writing. Examiners require all of the normalforms of assistance which should be provided to any reader. Theyappreciate work which is logically presented, focused, succinct,summarised and in which signposts are used to help readers tounderstand the path they are taking through the work.

(Johnston 1997: 345)

Seeing the examiner as a ‘reader’ is an important reminder. Whileexaminers clearly bring the highest standards to their reading of thethesis, we cannot let this somehow release us from the responsibilityof making our writing make sense to them . . . [T]hesis writers shouldsee themselves as ‘assisting’ readers, not just persuading them, to seethe value of their work.

(Murray 2002: 54, 55)

Both these passages draw attention to the thesis writer’s responsibility to‘signpost’ and ‘assist’ the readers. Such ‘signposting’ and assistance willmake your text more reader-friendly, and relevant techniques arediscussed in a later section of this chapter.

Expectations of the examiners as examiners

Examiners will expect a variety of criteria to be satisfied in their readingof the thesis. A more detailed discussion of examiners’ assessment criteriaand practices is provided in Chapter 7, and should be read in conjunctionwith this section. In particular, you may find it useful to read the Instituteof Education’s criteria for examining a PhD thesis (see Box 7.1). It isimportant that your thesis is structured and presented to satisfy theexaminers’ expectations; in short, this means that the thesis must bewritten to display the characteristics and standards associated with adoctoral thesis (Chapters 1 and 7).

As you write your thesis, consider how its content addresses thestandards and criteria that relate to doctoral research:

• Have you addressed all such issues (of relevance) in your thesis? • Where exactly are these issues addressed in your thesis? • Where does your thesis demonstrate that your research is of doctoral

standard?


• Is it clear to the examiner that you are directly addressing theseissues, or must the examiner infer and guess your intentions? (Thisis where forecasting and signposting may help.)

Some excellent examples of how PhD theses demonstrate the expecteddoctoral standards are provided by the University of Wollongong,Australia, in their website ‘Thesis Writing Resources’ (available at:http://www.uow.edu.au/research/current/thesiswriting.html). Advice isprovided on the expected content from different sections of the thesis(e.g. abstract, literature review, results, discussion, conclusions) and anoverview of the different types of thesis structure. Examples are includedfrom all sections of the typical PhD thesis and across a range of disci-plines. Each example is annotated to point out how the thesis meets theexpected structure; issues of style are also discussed.

A fundamental aim of the PhD project is to provide a research trainingprocess that provides the research student with the skills to conductresearch without supervision. Thus, the thesis should provide theexaminers with insight into how you have learned to implement suchskills to produce a project of doctoral standard. In practice, for example,this may mean that your written thesis should explain and justify theresearch approaches and methodology to a level of detail that exceedsthat appropriate to a journal article. This expectation may not be so obvious. Doctoral students are under increasing pressure to publishtheir research, and their role models in a research discipline tend to beleading researchers who report their findings in journals in a very succinctand concise style. Writing a thesis, however, is not the same as writingfor publication, and examiners (and other readers) expect a thesis toprovide more information than would normally be presented in a journalpublication (but this is not a licence to provide superfluous information).Even at universities where the publication of several papers is encouragedor required, it is generally not acceptable for the PhD thesis to consist ofa selection of bound papers (published or unpublished). The bound papersmust be accompanied by, for example, a general introduction and generaldiscussion that seeks to integrate and synthesise the work so that it formsa coherent whole.

The structure and presentation of the thesis

A previous section mentioned the importance of ‘issues of structure andpresentation’. This section describes these issues in more detail, and their


importance in achieving the expected standard of presentation. In thiscontext, I discuss how university regulations impinge on the presentationof thesis, and highlight the use of typography as an aid to reading thethesis. I outline some common techniques that can assist readers, andbriefly discuss and provide references for further reading for grammar,syntax and other conventions of academic writing.

Institutional requirements of theses

PhD examiners also inspect compliance with the university’s formattingrequirements for the thesis, and it should be a foregone conclusion thatthe required formatting has been correctly applied prior to submission.Your supervisor is responsible for ensuring that you are provided with therelevant information on the format of your thesis and submission dead-lines. The details of these formatting requirements vary from universityto university, but may also vary with time within a university; therefore,while it should be useful to inspect a recently submitted thesis from youruniversity department, ensure that it is up to date. Typically, universitiesindicate requirements for the following:

• The title page. This is important. Most university departments havestrict requirements for the format of the title page, which mayinclude a sentence such as: ‘Thesis submitted to the University ofXYZ in candidature for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.’

• Word limit for the Title• Word limit for the Abstract• Word or page limits for the thesis• Paper size (typically A4), weight and colour• Location of page numbers• Table of contents• Margin widths• Font type and sizes (Times New Roman, 12 point is commonly used)• Line-spacing of text • Referencing style within the text and in the Bibliography• Numbered headings• Provision of raw data in the Appendices• The provision of an electronic disk with raw data• The type of binding that is required at submission (unbound, soft

binding or hard binding)• The number of thesis copies that must be submitted and to whom

(may be a central university office rather than a departmental office).


Typographic layout

The layout of text (typography) can significantly affect people’s abilityto read and comprehend it (e.g. Hartley 1994a). For example, increasedclarity and comprehension are associated with larger font size, the use ofparagraphs, and some rewriting for clarification (see Hartley 1994b forfurther details).

A comparison of the two examples in Box 5.2 illustrates how a changein the layout of text and the use of some simple subheadings, font styles,line spacing and bullet points can improve the structure, presentationand clarity of a piece of writing. Example 2 in Box 5.2 is selected toillustrate the use of typography, but the majority of your thesis will notemploy this number of typographical elements in such a short length oftext; to do so would be very distracting for a reader. This exampledemonstrates the potential use of typography in some situations; however,the most common typographical issue in PhD theses is probably thedivision of long tracts of text into paragraphs with explanatory sub-headings.


Box 5.2 Typographical improvements to writing

Example 1

Identification of indicators for use in monitoring and evaluationof educational policies.

The objective of the study is to identify and select quantitativeindicators for a monitoring programme that may be integrated intoan evaluation of the effectiveness of educational policies. Overall,the work programme will: review the literature for information oncurrent best practice in monitoring the impacts of educationalpolicies; appoint a Steering Group that will advise on the ongoingdevelopment of the project, and conduct a consultation processwith national experts, and with a number of stakeholder organ-isations with an interest in the monitoring of the impact andeffectiveness of educational policies. The study will result in areport that will identify relevant and measurable environmentalattributes, and significantly advance the ability to implement amonitoring programme. The study will not be directly addressingthe design and implementation of a monitoring programme, which


would require a detailed consideration of the sampling protocols,the experimental design of a sampling programme, and the datamanagement and statistical treatment of the collected data.

Example 2

Identification of indicators for use in monitoring and evaluationof educational policies.

Objectives of the study

The objective of the study is to identify and select quantitativeindicators for a monitoring programme that may be integrated intoan evaluation of the effectiveness of educational policies.

Approach to the study

Overall, the work programme will:

• Review the literature for information on current best practicein monitoring the impacts of educational policies.

• Appoint a Steering Group that will advise on the ongoingdevelopment of the project.

• Conduct a consultation process with national experts, andwith a number of stakeholder organisations with an interestin the monitoring of the impact and effectiveness of educa-tional policies.

Scope of the study

The study will result in a report that will identify relevant andmeasurable indicators, and significantly advance the ability toimplement a monitoring programme.

The study will not be directly addressing the design and imple-mentation of a monitoring programme, which would require adetailed consideration of the sampling protocols, the experimentaldesign of a sampling programme, and the data management andstatistical treatment of the collected data.

As another example, a comparison of two abstracts that differ in theirtypographical layout is provided in Figure 1 of Hartley (2000) (whichcan be viewed online at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=35254).

Techniques to assist the reader

As mentioned earlier, you will need to consider some techniques thatassist the reader, and plan to implement these techniques appropriately.Examples of such techniques include forecasting, summarising, signallingand signposting (Murray 2002: 194). Overall, these techniques help thereader (including your examiners) to comprehend the coherence andstoryline of the thesis.

Forecasting

Forecasting involves letting readers know in advance what will (or willnot) happen in the text. Forecasting provides the reader with cues toallow them to ‘set the scene’. An example would be a summary of thecontents of a chapter; an overview at the beginning of a chapter thatindicates the main issues and findings, or an indication of the sequenceof events that occurs in a chapter, and how they contribute to theresearch question. An example of the latter (from a journal article in thesocial sciences) is as follows:

The article looks first at what quantifiable measures may and maynot tell us about the nature of madness in eighteenth-centuryScotland and about the relationships between pathologies and the‘normal’ structures of society. It seeks to test a common assumptionor assertion, made by prominent figures such as Elaine Showalter,that ‘madness is a female malady because it is experienced by morewomen than men’. It questions whether those with mental problemswere really just the victims of an oppressive (professional and male)form of discourse. The second half of the article explores certainqualitative aspects of how insanity was construed by the sane, inorder to assess the extent of gendering in the day-to-day under-standing of mental problems.

(Houston 2002: 309–10)


Summarising

A related technique to forecasting is summarising, where the mainmessage can be repeated at the end of a section. This can be a useful aidto achieve emphasis, and to remind the reader of the main message ofthe current section before they proceed to a new topic or section. It canalso allow the reader to evaluate whether the preceding text supportedyour concluding main message, a preference indicated by a PhDexaminer: ‘I would suggest that a summary paragraph at the end of eachsection would give the reader an additional sense of priorities and focusand give the reader a what-did-it-all-mean type of understanding’(Johnston 1997: 340).

Signalling

Signalling involves the selection of words to display the various logicallinks in the research plan and to direct the readers’ interpretation of your writing: ‘it is not enough to have constructed a fine logical plan for your writing; it must be revealed for the readers’ (Murray 2002:197).

The use of comment and connecting words is advocated by Barrass(2002: 75) to ‘help readers follow your train of thought’. Such commentwords include ‘clearly’, ‘even’, ‘as expected’, and ‘unexpected’ andconnecting words include: ‘for example’, ‘first’, ‘second’, ‘if’, ‘then’, ‘even’,‘therefore’, ‘hence’, ‘however’, ‘on the contrary’, ‘moreover’, ‘meanwhile’,‘whereas’, ‘as a result’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘similarly’, ‘so’, ‘thus’, ‘but’, ‘either’,‘or’, ‘on the one hand’, and ‘on the other hand’ (modified from Barrass,ibid.). These comment and connecting words are important devices withwhich to convey more fully the meaning and interaction of sequences oflogic in your text. For example, a contrast between two sequences of textcan be achieved by the words ‘however’, ‘on the contrary’, ‘alternatively’and ‘but’; emphasis or clarification can be achieved by ‘then’, ‘therefore’,‘hence’, ‘moreover’, and ‘as a result’. The following extracts provide afurther example, with the connecting words emphasised in bold:

While countries where women have better education and economicopportunities have lower fertility in general, the directions ofcausality are not clear. Perhaps cultures that are ready to invest ineducating girls and women are also ready for fertility to fall. In anyevent, in cultures where women are expected to marry early, raisemany children and have no independent lives outside of their homes,


improving the status of women through education and employmentoverthrows the traditional concept of the family.

(Cohen 1995: 70–1)

Signposting

Signposting is similar to signalling; however, while signalling is embeddedin the text, signposting usually operates at a higher level. Thus, sign-posting may be achieved by the use of headings, and subheadings (seeBox 5.2 ‘Typographical improvements to writing’). Additionally, the firstfew sentences of a major section could be used to remind the reader ofhow that section contributes to the wider argument.

Overall, these (and other similar) techniques are a means of providingyour readers with a framework to help negotiate the logical structure andorganisation of your work and thereby better understand your research.Importantly, PhD examiners (and other readers) also value the benefitsthat arise from these techniques.

Grammar and writing conventions

Examiners’ reports almost always refer to writing quality and the editorialstandard of the thesis (Johnston 1997: 339); examiners appreciate a well-written thesis, and they are negatively affected by a thesis withgrammatical and editorial errors:


Exercise 5.2

Analyse a chapter of your own thesis or someone else’s for thepresence of:

• forecasting• summarising• signalling• signposting.

Referring to the thesis chapter that you chose for analysis, couldit have benefited from more use of these techniques? Identifywhich techniques would have improved specific sections.

For my part, I found it very distracting and time-consuming to becontinually stopping over things which should have been picked upbefore submission.

Finally, proper proof reading is required. There are word omissions,and words apparently left over from editing. Take care with sentencestructure and with clarity of argument. The standard of literarypresentation in the dissertation should be that of the journal andconference papers presented in support. At the moment, it is not.

One has to keep in mind that there is often a relationship betweenthe quality of presentation and quality of scientific results.

(three examiners’ quotes in Johnston 1997: 339, 340)

Sloppiness in the text indicates sloppy research. (Mullins and Kiley 2002: 383)

These comments illustrate how a poorly written thesis can irritate anexaminer, and undermine an examiner’s confidence in the quality of theresearch. The second quote indicates the expected standard of writing – ‘that of the journal’. Thus, your thesis is expected to demonstrateexcellence in writing, as well as excellence in research.

Here, I have focused on the writing of text, but the presentation ofyour thesis is also likely to require some more specialised conventions,such as the presentation of tables and figures (and their legends), equa-tions, statistical results, etc. Further reading on these topics will be readilyavailable in your university library.

Does your writing need to improve if you are to attain a standard ofexcellence? If so, how will you achieve this improvement in your writing?Unless you are most fortunate, you will need to study and learn aboutwriting. Of course, this is yet another demand on your time. In addition,the attainment of high quality in your writing requires time for draftingand numerous revisions. Unfortunately, many students choose not toallow time needed for learning about writing to compete with time forconducting research. However, this suggests that they neither fullyappreciate that a good researcher needs to be a good writer nor that it isthe quality, rather than quantity, of research that is important.

A variety of resources (online and printed) are available to helpimprove your writing. Many should be available in your university libraryand your supervisor may be able to direct you to resources of particularrelevance to your discipline. Some recommended references on grammar


and style are provided in the ‘Recommended reading’ section at the endof this chapter.

Referencing

Inconsistent and improper citation of references is frequently identifiedby examiners as an indicator of the poor quality of a thesis (Winter et al.2000; Mullins and Kiley 2002). Therefore, I introduce some of the mainconventions and practices associated with referencing.

Two common methods of referencing are the British Standard and the Harvard System. The British Standard method numbers thereferences in the order in which they are presented in the text. Theexamples in this chapter focus on the Harvard System. For some furtherinformation, see the resources of the Communication Skills Unit at theBolton Institute (http://www.bolton.ac.uk/learning/pubs/csu/index.htm),and of the University of Liverpool’s Graduate School (‘Thesis Writing’at http://www.liv.ac.uk/gradschool/prdpresources.htm).

Note that the following information provides guidance on commonconventions when citing references. However, your university may havemore specialised requirements that conflict with the general guidanceprovided here – be sure to determine the correct referencing style that isrequired for your thesis.

Citing references in the text

One of the conventions associated with academic referencing is that any list of references that are cited in the text should be listed inchronological order. Thus, the first of these two examples is not correct;the second is:

1. For further information on the use of references in academicwriting, see the following references in ‘Selected reading’: Day(1998), Lindsay (1995), Malmfors, Garnsworthy and Grossman(2000), Rudestam and Newton (1992: Chapter 4); Parsons andKnight (1995: 130–132), Hart (1998), Barnard, Gilbert andMcGregor (2001) and Swetnam (1997).

2. For further information on the use of references in academicwriting, see the following references in ‘Selected reading’: Rudestamand Newton (1992: Chapter 4); Lindsay (1995), Parsons and Knight(1995: 130–132), Swetnam (1997), Day (1998), Hart (1998),


Malmfors, Garnsworthy and Grossman (2000) and Barnard, Gilbertand McGregor (2001).

For references by one or two authors, the surnames of the author(s) areprovided. For references with three authors, the three are referred to infull on the first mention, e.g. ‘Malmfors, Garnsworthy and Grossman(2000)’. Subsequent references appear as ‘Malmfors et al. (2000)’. Notethat ‘et al.’ usually appears in italics (because it is a Latin phrase) and witha full stop (because it is an abbreviation for et alia).

For references with more than three authors, only the first author ismentioned at all times in the text, followed by ‘et al.’, e.g. Murphy et al.(2000). However, all of the authors in a multi-author paper must be listedin the References section.

The ‘References’ section

There are strict conventions surrounding the listing of references. Be veryclear on the expected format for your thesis (if there is one), and consultwith the requirements of your university. It is very important that youare absolutely consistent in your presentation of references. The mainconventions are:

1 Alphabetically rank the surnames of first authors.2 For each author, present their publications in order of single-author

publications, double-author publications, and all other multi-authorpublications.

3 For each author, present their single-author publications chrono-logically from earliest to most recent publications; then for eachdouble-author publication, rank chronologically from earliest tomost recent publications; all other papers with more than twoauthors are then presented chronologically from earliest to mostrecent publications.

4 More than one publication in the same year by the same author(s)can be denoted alphabetically e.g. 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, etc.

Thus:Anders, C. (2000)Anders, D. (1987)Anders, D. (2001)Anders, D. and Franks, J. (1987)


Anders, D., Fatyer, F. and Franks, J. (1986)Doody, A. (2002)Doody, A., Patterson, D. and Franks, J. (2001a)Doody, A., Patterson, D. and Franks, J. (2001b)

In the list of references at the end of your chapter/thesis, there must bean entry to match each of the references mentioned in the text. To ensurethis, an excellent practice is to print off a hard copy of the text and thelist of references. As you locate and identify references in the text, placea tick beside the corresponding entry in the list of references. If there is not a corresponding entry, then write in the author name, year ofpublication and page number of your text where this reference appears.When you are finished, your list of references will indicate whichreferences need to be included. Any references without a tick are notmentioned in the text. At this stage, it may be useful to quickly double-check by using the ‘Find’ function of your word processor to check thatthe author’s name does not appear in the text (however, this will not pickup any incorrect spellings of the name in the text). Then the referenceeither needs to be cited in the text or deleted.

Your university may prescribe the exact format of the references intheses. Otherwise, adopt one of the common formats, and be absolutely


Exercise 5.3

In what order should the following list of authors be correctlypresented in the References section?

Baker, J. and Adams, S. (1998)Frank, A. and McCann, M. (1980) Frank, A. (1987)Gavin, B. (2000)Adams, D. (2001)Baker, J. (1999)Andrews, D. (2000)Baker, J., Adams, S. and Barrett, T. (1997)Frank, G. (1985)

See Appendix 2 for the corrected version.

consistent in your application of this format. As an example of the differentformats that may be encountered, consider the three variations of thefollowing (fictional) reference: each of these variations uses thereferencing format from a current journal.

Doody, A., Patterson, D. and Franks, J. (2001). What is a literaturereview? Journal of Postgraduate Education. 34, 23–35.

Doody, A., Patterson, D. and Franks, J. 2001. What is a literature review?Journal of Postgraduate Education. 34: 23–35.

Doody, A., Patterson, D., Franks, J. (2001) What is a literature review?J. Postgrad. Educ. 34: 23–35.

It is essential that you proofread your thesis before submitting it.Although you will have been frequently told to proofread your thesis, itis possible that you will have had little prior experience of proofreading.Exercise 5.4 includes a number of common problems that appear in theReferences section of theses. This is a very realistic example: beforeproofreading, it is almost certain that your thesis will contain these typesof error. I suggest that you photocopy this exercise and use a pen to circlethe errors. Then (and only then!), compare your identification of theerrors with the corrected version in Appendix 2. This exercise indicateshow attentive to detail you need to be.


Exercise 5.4

This exercise illustrates common referencing problems, andprovides some experience of proofreading.

There are several mistakes in the cited papers in the ‘References’section below. How many can you identify?

The following reference provides the expected referencingformat:

Lee, M. and Street, B. 1998. Student writing in higher education:an academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education 23:157–172.

Conclusion

Writing is an important tool for developing your understanding; you should therefore write regularly and throughout the full duration ofyour doctoral programme – not just during the final six months. Writingthe thesis in a way that convincingly demonstrates research of doctoralstandard is easier said than done. The final submission of the thesis isoften an emotionally tense and physically tiring experience and theremay be added pressure to submit before a deadline. In this situation, itmay be easy to lose sight of the fact that the submitted thesis is the primeobject of assessment. Be careful not to submit a thesis that is sub-standard


References

Brent, E.E., 1986. The computer-assisted literature review.Computers & the Social Sciences 2: 137–151

Dewhurst, D. G., Macleod, H.A and Norris, T.A.M. 2000.Indpendent student learning aided by computers: an acceptablealternative to lectures? Computers and Education 35, 223–241

Eklundh, K.S. 1994. Linear and non-linear strategies in computer-based writing. Computers and Composition 11: 203–216.

Heinich, R. Molenda, M., Russell, J.D. & Smaldino, S.E. 1996.Instructional Media and Technologies for Learning. EnglewoodCliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Szabo, A and Hastings. N. (2000). Using IT in the undergraduateclassroom: should we replace the blackboard with PowerPoint?Compters and Education 35: 175 – 187.

Marshall, S, 2001. Reference management software: it’s yourchoice. Technical Cmputing, 22; 16.

McGowan, Cynthia and Sendall, Patricia. 1997. Using the WorldWide Web to enhance writing assignments in introductorychemistry courses. J. Chem. Educ. 74: 391–392.

simply because it is rushed. Although the content and quality of yourresearch may be of doctoral standard, excessive haste to meet a deadlinemay be at the expense of the time that is required to structure, write,revise and edit the thesis to a doctoral standard. Plan sufficient time forthese important writing activities – they always require much more timethan expected (printers fail, software incompatibilities arise, and youlearn how to implement the correct formats). With appropriate planningthroughout your writing and at the end of your doctoral programme, youwill maintain and improve not just the quality of your research – whichwould be completed at this stage – but the quality of its presentation.

Recommended reading

Your library will contain many books on academic writing, and your supervisorcan recommend some that will be most appropriate to your discipline. Forresearchers who may be non-scientists, note that much of what is termed‘scientific writing’ is more widely applicable and should be more properly called‘academic writing’.

Publications

Barass, R. (2002) Scientists Must Write: A Guide to Better Writing for Scientists,Engineers and Students, 2nd edn, London: Routledge.

Booth, V. (1993) Communicating in Science: Writing a Scientific Paper andSpeaking at Scientific Meetings, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Highly recommended.

Chambers, E. and Northedge, A. (1997) The Arts Good Study Guide, MiltonKeynes: Open University Press.

Day, R.A. (1995) Scientific English: A Guide for Scientists and Other Professionals,2nd edn, Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.

Day, R.A. (1998) How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 5th edn, Westport,CT: Oryx Press.

Fabb, N. and Durant, A. (1993) How to Write Essays, Dissertations and Theses inLiterary Studies, London: Longman.



Peat, J., Elliot, E., Baur, L. and Keena, V. (2002) Scientific Writing: Easy WhenYou Know How, London: BMJ Books.

Swetnam, D. (1997) Writing your Dissertation: How to Plan, Prepare and PresentYour Work Successfully, Oxford: How to Books.

Rudestam, K.E. and Newton, R.R. (eds) (1992) Surviving your Dissertation: AComprehensive Guide to Content and Process, London: Sage.

See Chapter 9, ‘Writing’ by Jody Veroff.

Truss, L. (2003) Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach toPunctuation, London: Profile Books.

An engaging and enjoyable introduction to punctuation.

Online resources

Thesis Writing Resources (University of Wollongong).http://www.uow.edu.au/research/current/thesiswriting.htmlThis excellent site provides an overview of the different types of thesis structure,and includes examples from thesis chapters across a range of disciplines. Someissues of style are also discussed.

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant (POWA) by Chuck Guilford.http://www.powa.org/This is an interactive, menu-driven, online writer’s guide and handbook.

‘PhD: first thoughts to finished writing’ by Katherine Samuelowicz, Lesley Chaseand Mandy Symons, Learning Assistance Unit, University of Queensland,Australia.

http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/phdwriting/

‘How to write a PhD thesis’ by Joe Wolfe, University of New South Wales.http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/thesis.html

A variety of excellent writing resources are provided by the CommunicationSkills Unit, The Bolton Institute.

http://www.bolton.ac.uk/learning/pubs/csu/index.htm

‘Careful scientific writing: a guide for the nitpicker, the novice, and the nervous’by E.R. Firestone and S.B. Hooker.

http://www.stc.org/confproceed/2001/PDFs/STC48-000133.PDF

The Elements of Style by William Strunk.http://www.bartleby.com/141/index.html


‘Internet resources for scientific writing’ by Svetla Baykoucheva.http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/special/02sb_inet.htmlThis website provides an impressive listing of a variety of Internet facilities thatrelate to scientific writing.

‘Word usage in scientific writing’.http://www.ag.iastate.edu/aginfo/checklist.html This listing includes some of the troublesome words, terms, and expressionsmost frequently found in journal papers and bulletin manuscripts.

Scientific Training by Assignment for Research Students (STARS) by JohnFinn and Anne Crook.

http://www.ucc.ie/research/stars/links.html A number of links to websites on plagiarism are available under the section‘Scientific Writing’. The links include examples of plagiarism and explanatorynotes.

‘Lawyer as writer’ by James R. Elkins.http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/writeshop/links.html Contains a variety of links about writing; see especially ‘The Writing Process’‘Revising Your Writing’ and ‘Freewriting’.

Language and Learning Skills Unit, University of Melbourne.http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/llsu/resources/pg_materials.htmlProvides essential reading on originality and thesis-writing for perfectionists, aswell as external links.

Grammar, Punctuation and Capitalization: A Handbook for Technical Writers andEditors by M.K. McCaskill.

http://stipo.larc.nasa.gov/sp7084/index.html


Chapter 6

Publishing your research

Introduction

For any research discipline to progress and develop, new contribu-tions to knowledge must be disseminated to the research community. Tothis end, researchers publish their research in many different ways: asconference abstracts, newspaper articles, popular articles in sciencemagazines and bulletins, book chapters, etc. In some disciplines, it iscommon for the PhD thesis to be modified for publication as a book;however, publication in a research journal is typically the most impor-tant and influential method, because journal articles are reviewed byresearchers with relevant expertise (a form of quality control) and aredistributed to a specialist audience of scholars. In such a way, research isboth open to critical evaluation and made available to the academiccommunity.

In addition to disseminating knowledge, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is also important for PhD students, for a number ofreasons. First, for many PhD students, the publication of several researchpapers is a formal requirement for the award of PhD degree (e.g. someuniversities in the Netherlands). For other students, there is more of anexpectation of research papers, rather than a formal requirement. Never-theless, a PhD thesis is usually required to demonstrate research ofsufficient quality that, if written in a suitable form, would be publishable.Therefore, publication in an international peer-reviewed journal is clearand tangible evidence that your research meets the doctoral requirementto be publishable. Second, the publication of your research ensures itscommunication to the research community, both now and in the future.Through publication of your research and findings, you are directlyengaging with, and becoming part of, the community of research scholar-ship. Publishing one’s work also provides the possibility of receiving

constructive feedback from other academics (Shaw and Abouzeid 2002).Third, the publication of your work establishes your claim for any creditand priority associated with the generation of new research (which maybe particularly relevant in highly competitive research areas). Fourth, the successful publication of your work is recognition of the quality ofyour work, which develops your confidence, self-esteem and experienceas a researcher. Of course, the publication of your research is also evi-dence to potential employers of your high-level training and ability in research.

Throughout this chapter, I describe some of the challenges andprocedures associated with the publication of research, in the hope thatthese will be more manageable when you encounter them. However,publishing your research is not just about overcoming difficulties andlearning procedures; more fundamentally, most researchers consider thepublication of research to be an intellectually stimulating and rewardingexperience. There is tremendous satisfaction in seeing your researchreported in a journal, and a sense of completion about the work that wasundertaken (indeed, many researchers consider that their research is notcompleted until it is published). Even experienced researchers who havepublished many papers continue to feel great pride and satisfaction fromthe publication of their work.

In this chapter, attention is focused on the typical process that occurswhen a manuscript is submitted for publication in a peer-reviewedjournal. By indicating the main stages in the publication process, I aimto demystify the process and boost your confidence as you prepare andapproach this important milestone of your research career.

Deciding to publish

Although there may be clear benefits to publishing your work (see above),the demands of preparing a manuscript for publication mean that youneed to consider whether publication is in your best interest. Publicationof research will be more of a priority for students who intend to pursuean academic career. Similarly, student researchers in a rapidly developingarea may need to publish as soon as possible: a two- or three-year waituntil the thesis is completed may be too long. In contrast, students whoare doing a PhD for personal development or intellectual challenge maywell prefer to prioritise the completion of their thesis, keeping in mindthat: ‘It takes valuable time to write a manuscript for publication. It mightbe that this time could be better spent on the research studies’ (Shaw andAbouzeid 2002: 61).

138 Publishing your research

Discuss the publication of your work with your supervisor, and berealistic about whether the considerable time demands of the publicationprocess are balanced by the benefits.

Preparing to publishMany research students find the publication process daunting. However,there are several sources of assistance. Discuss the publication processwith your supervisor and with other PhD students and postdoctoralresearchers who are publishing their research. The guidance and experi-ence of others can give you an insight into some of the requirements anddemands of writing journal articles.

It is very likely that not all of your doctoral research will bepublishable. Although sound in design, analysis and presentation, someresearch may not be of sufficient general interest or novelty to warrantpublication in a journal. From an early stage, achieve great clarity on theresearch questions that you want to address in your research manuscript,and do not include other research of marginal relevance: include onlythe relevant research that is required to address the stated objectives.Students who first write up their research as a thesis chapter are oftentaken aback at how much more precision and focus are required toconvert the chapter into a journal manuscript and reformat it in thejournal’s style. Therefore, be prepared to make the hard decisions to edit(and omit less relevant sections from) a thesis chapter that is beingprepared for submission to a journal; it will save time and effort to do thissooner rather than later.

When publishing work from their thesis, it is typical that the researchstudent is the lead author; this will entail some additional responsibilities:drafting the first version of the manuscript; distributing the manuscriptto other authors for feedback and revision; incorporating comments fromother authors into the manuscript; distributing the final version to allauthors before submission of the manuscript to the journal; and ensuringthat all authors agree to submit to the journal. It is worth clarifying whois responsible for the different activities right at the start of manuscriptpreparation, as supervisors sometimes undertake some of these.

Choosing a journal

It is advisable to identify an appropriate journal before you prepare amanuscript and your supervisor will provide valuable guidance in thisrespect. Nevertheless, by the time you have completed your manuscript(or maybe before you start writing it), you will probably have a reasonably

Publishing your research 139

good idea of two or three appropriate journals. Read the editorial policyof each of these journals (usually available on the journal’s website) toensure that your manuscript matches the subject area and scope of thejournal. Check the typical length and style of the papers, and sample thetitles and abstracts of some of the papers. You should soon get a goodimpression of whether your manuscript corresponds to the requirementsof the journal.

When selecting a journal, you will need to consider a number offactors such as the duration between submission and publication, thedegree of specialisation of the journal, whether page charges are applied,the rejection rate, whether it has a national or international circulationand whether the intended audience is composed of academics and/orpractitioners.

Many professional evaluations of research performance use the impact factor of a journal as a measure of the quality of research output.Therefore, the impact factor is often an influential factor in the selectionof a journal. The impact factor of a journal is a measure of the averagefrequency of citation of that journal’s papers in one year. However, youshould remember that a direct comparison of impact factors acrossdifferent research categories is misleading; one simply cannot comparethe circulation volume of Nature (with an impact factor of about 30) orAnnual Review of Biochemistry (about 36) with Death Studies (about 0.7)or Journal of Applied Psychology (about 2). A more useful exercise may beto inspect the ranking of the journals within the subject category that isrelevant to you. Despite the value of the impact factor, you can checkwhether you are publishing in the high-ranking journals within yourresearch category. However, as stated above, the impact factor or rankingof the journal is only one of several considerations when choosing ajournal.

Publish or perish

The pressures of the so-called ‘publish or perish’ principle have led to astrategy of some scientists deliberately publishing their work as ‘minimumpublishable units’, thereby maximising the number of publications fromtheir work. However, the content that is sufficient to satisfy a minimumpublishable unit is usually only appropriate to less prestigious journals; incomparison, more prestigious journals will require considerably morecontent. A publication record of fewer papers in more prestigious journalsis widely considered a better testament to a researcher’s ability to conductresearch of a high quality: ‘Contributions to a scientific field are not


counted in terms of the number of papers. They are counted in terms ofsignificant differences in how science is understood’ (NAS 1995). Thisis an important consideration for research students at the beginning oftheir careers, and who will inevitably be applying for research positions.

Authorship

Most of the time, the question of authorship (whose names should appear on the manuscript) is relatively easy to decide, and it is typicalthat the student’s name is first. The important point is that you need todiscuss and agree the issue of authorship with your supervisors (and anyother potential co-authors) well in advance of producing a manuscript.Unfortunately, deciding on authorship can sometimes be awkward andoccasionally controversial; when this occurs, disputes about authorshipcan be extremely divisive. Unfortunately, these situations can be difficultto resolve, and are becoming more frequent as more collaborative projectsproduce multi-author papers, and as researchers’ professional performanceis increasingly judged on publication output.

Problems with interpreting and applying authorship criteria arecommon. In a questionnaire returned by 809 corresponding authors ofbiomedical journal articles, 19 per cent of articles had evidence of hon-orary authors (named authors who did not meet authorship criteria), 11 per cent had evidence of ghost authors (individuals not named asauthors but who had contributed substantially to the work), and 2 percent had evidence of both (Flanagin et al. 1998). Therefore, about onein four articles in their sample demonstrated misapplication of authorshipcriteria and inappropriate assignment of authorship, which is ‘incom-patible with the principles, duties, and ethical responsibilities involvedin scientific publication’ (ibid.).

So, what set of criteria should be used to determine entitlement toauthorship? Unfortunately, there is no universally agreed definition ofauthorship and, frequently, the absence of a common understandingabout the criteria for authorship is the root cause of disputes. Box 6.1‘Further guidelines on authorship of journal publications’ provides a moredetailed account of criteria that are adopted by biomedical journals, andindicates the issues that surround entitlement to authorship. Even whencriteria for authorship are well established, there may be difficulty indeciding when an individual fully satisfies the criteria – and there alwaysare marginal cases. As if there is not enough confusion, it seems there arefew institutional mechanisms, protocols or conventions that providedetailed guidance on either allocating authorship or resolving disputes.


PhD students whose manuscript is at issue may find themselves in thedifficult, if not intolerable, position of trying to mediate between seniorresearchers. The situation calls for a steady temperament and, if initialefforts do not resolve the situation, it is highly advisable to seek someform of arbitration by a senior figure, such as the person responsible forpostgraduate students or the Head of Department.

When a dispute arises, journal editors do not normally get involved – disputes about authorship (or any other issue) need to be resolved beforesubmitting a manuscript to a journal. However, issues may arise aftersubmission, e.g. a student becomes aware that their supervisor hassubmitted a manuscript that is based on the student’s work, but whichdoes not include the student as an author. In such a (rare) case, you mustinform the journal editor as soon as possible, as such issues can be moreeasily dealt with before publication. For a manuscript that has beenaccepted but not published, then it is most likely that it will not proceedto publication until the authors come to an agreement. If they cannot,one possibility is for each author to submit their case to the journal, andthe journal editors could act as an impartial panel; however, this wouldbe quite an exceptional occurrence. If the manuscript has already beenpublished, a similar form of arbitration can be used. If the decision is tomake changes to the authorship of a published paper, then a note wouldhave to be published in the journal, pointing out the changes. TheInstitute for Scientific Information (ISI) would be notified and asked tocorrect their files, and changes would have to be made to the journal’swebsite files.


Box 6.1 Further guidelines on authorship of journal publications

The ‘Vancouver Protocol’ establishes guidelines for the format ofmanuscripts submitted to a large collection of biomedical journals,and is set out in the fifth edition of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/). It covers a variety of issues that relate to style, for-mat, ethical conduct, and responsible research practices. The‘Vancouver Protocol’ provides the following minimum require-ments for authorship:

All persons designated as authors should qualify for author-ship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author


should have participated sufficiently in the work to take publicresponsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One ormore authors should take responsibility for the integrity of thework as a whole, from inception to published article.

Authorship credit should be based only on:

1 substantial contributions to conception and design, oracquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;

2 drafting the article or revising it critically for importantintellectual content;

3 final approval of the version to be published.

Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met. Acquisition of funding,the collection of data, or general supervision of the researchgroup, by themselves, do not justify authorship.

Authors should provide a description of what each con-tributed, and editors should publish that information. Allothers who contributed to the work who are not authorsshould be named in the Acknowledgments, and what they didshould be described.

Increasingly, authorship of multicenter trials is attributedto a group. All members of the group who are named as authorsshould fully meet the above criteria for authorship. Groupmembers who do not meet these criteria should be listed, withtheir permission, in the Acknowledgments or in an appendix(see Acknowledgments).

The order of authorship on the byline should be a jointdecision of the coauthors. Authors should be prepared toexplain the order in which authors are listed.

In addition to a variety of recommended practices for researchprojects, the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty providesdetailed discussion on the Vancouver Protocol and other author-ship issues in ‘Guidelines for Good Scientific Practice (1998)’,available at http://www.forsk.dk/eng/uvvu/publ/. A number ofuseful publications and resources are also available from theCommittee on Publication Ethics at http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/.

Submitting the manuscript

Having identified a journal, your manuscript needs to conform to the‘Instructions for Authors’ that are typically available on the inside coverof the journal and on the journal’s website. Make sure that you show themanuscript to each of the co-authors (if there are co-authors). You shouldexpect significant feedback from your supervisors, not just on grammar,but also on the research issues, methodology, results and interpretation.After incorporating their comments, and when you think the manuscriptis ready to send to the journal, it is a very good idea to put the manuscriptaway for a while, and then re-read and proofread it. You will inevitablyfind mistakes or wish to make improvements.

Do not blindly incorporate the feedback and comments of yoursupervisor and co-authors. The majority of their comments will behelpful, but if you are doubtful about any point that they have made, it is very important that this is discussed and a consensus is attained. By the time you begin to publish your research, you will have acquiredsignificant expertise and should be more knowledgeable about the specificdetails of your research topic than your supervisor and co-authors; there-fore, you should be ready to take responsibility for explaining, clarifyingand resolving any differences in interpretation that arise. It is crucial thatyour manuscript is written and presented to the highest possible standardbefore it is submitted to the journal; specifically, do not look upon thejournal refereeing system as a double-check on your work – poorly writtenmanuscripts will be quickly rejected by busy referees and editors.

Having ensured that all authors have seen the final version of the manuscript and agree to submit it, the next step is to submit therequired number of copies to the journal. When submitting a manuscriptfor publication, it is conventional to submit the text only as one singlesection. A separate page is next provided for all of the figure legends,followed by each of the figures on a separate page. Each table (with theappropriate legend above the table) is presented on a separate page. Makesure that you have printed a high quality copy of the text, figures andtables. It is usual to include a cover letter that simply provides themanuscript title and authors, and indicates that you will expect to hearfrom the journal editor in due course.

When deciding who is corresponding author, it is worth consideringthat the supervisor will usually be at the same address for a period of years, whereas research students may not. Note that the time betweensubmission of the manuscript and seeing your paper in print can beconsiderable, and can vary from 6 months to 18 months. You will feel,


deservedly, a huge sense of relief when you submit the manuscript.However, in most cases, there will still be plenty of work to be done inlight of the referees’ comments.

The publishing of journals is undergoing many changes to accommo-date and benefit from electronic media. Some journals currently permitelectronic submission of journals, a practice that is likely to become morewidespread in future. Many journals now have an electronic trackingsystem that allows an author to track the progress of their manuscriptfrom submission to refereeing to publication.

The peer-review process

Upon receipt of the manuscript, the journal will typically acknowledgereceipt and provide you with a reference, which you should use in allcorrespondence. The journal editor next sends a copy of the manuscriptto (typically) two referees a.k.a. reviewers. The referees are involved toensure that your manuscript is suitable to the scope of the journal,contains research of an acceptable standard, and, if appropriate, to suggestimprovements to the manuscript. The content and form of referees’reports vary across journals. Many journal report forms have criteria thatare used to guide the evaluation. It is worth asking your supervisor aboutthe conventions and criteria that may be associated with your researchdiscipline. It is remarkable how similar the assessment criteria used bythe journals of very different research disciplines may be; examples ofcommon assessment criteria are provided in Box 6.2.


Box 6.2 Overview of prominent criteria used to assess journalmanuscripts

Presentation

Does the title of the paper clearly reflect the contents?Does the abstract represent the contents of the paper, and is it

informative rather than merely indicative?Is the text clear and well written?Is the paper unnecessarily long?Are all the tables and figures necessary, and are the legends

sufficiently informative?


Do all the tables and figures present the data accurately andeffectively?

Is the paper accessible to both specialists and non-specialists withan interest in the topic, or is it accessible to specialists only?

Content

Is the research put in the context of the research field as a whole?Are the objectives/hypotheses clearly stated?Are the ideas soundly developed and clearly presented?Is the methodology clearly stated and appropriate to the objectives?Is the statistical treatment adequate and are the data correctly

interpreted?Are the conclusions justified?Is the paper sufficiently rigorous, accurate and correct?Is conflicting evidence overlooked or ignored?Are key references included and are the references up to date?

Importance

Is the research of major significance on an important or highlynovel topic?

Is the research of broad significance with some novel aspects?Is the research useful but lacking in originality: sound but routine?Is the research of limited significance?Is the research outside the scope of the journal?

Overall assessment

Overall assessment: excellent/good/weak?Are the interpretations and conclusions sound and justified by the

evidence/data?Is this a new and original contribution?Does it give sufficient attention to the literature?

Recommendation

Accept without revision.Accept with minor editorial changes.

The provision of a written evaluation from the referees is an almostuniversal feature of the peer-review process. The content and tone ofsome referees’ comments are legendary – unfortunately, this is becauseof the sometimes rude and personal nature of the comments (which a good journal editor should not tolerate), and other times dogmatic and blunt approach. However, the majority of referees are professional,helpful and well intentioned and, as a general rule, you should expectthem to be tough but fair. It is almost inevitable that the referees willprovide some criticism, albeit in a constructive manner. Ultimately, theircomments will improve the quality of your publication. For example,comments may point out instances of poor presentation, misrepre-sentation of other research findings, problems with references, a requestfor clarification of certain points (most often in the Objectives, Materialsand Methods or Discussion), or a request for less relevant text to bedeleted (see Box 6.4). Most of these issues can be dealt with as minorrevision. However, referees may request major revisions as a condition of publication, e.g. they may insist upon a different analysis of data (withthe consequent effects on the Results and Discussion and Conclusion ofthe manuscript), redrawing of graphs and tables, restructuring of themanuscript, or a substantial reduction in length.

Of course, referees may also recommend that the manuscript is not suitable for publication; however, there may be a number of reasonsfor this. For example, the manuscript may be of a perfectly acceptablestandard, but not appropriate to the scope of the journal that you sent it to. As another example, the manuscript is rejected, but may berecommended for resubmission after major revision. Alternatively, themanuscript is rejected because the research or its reporting is not of anacceptable standard. For research students submitting their work forpublication, it can be a disheartening or even devastating experience tohave their work rejected. Although rejection is not easy to take, don’tworry; you are in good company. Virtually all researchers have had


Accept with revision, but not requiring reconsideration by thereferees.

Review again after major revision.Reject in present form but encourage submission of new manu-

script.Reject without prospect of resubmission.Is there any reason for rapid publication?

manuscripts rejected, and a study of successful ecologists found thatalmost one quarter of their published papers were rejected at least once:‘However, manuscript rejection is not indicative of scientific inadequacy. . . The moral seems to be that if at first you don’t succeed, try try again’(Cassey and Blackburn 2003: 376).

In an analysis of 142 reviews of 58 manuscripts received by aneducational journal, the following broad categories of referees’ criticismswere identified, in order of frequency of occurrence:

• lack of methodological transparency, adequacy or rationale;• unjustified claims;• shortcomings in format;• theoretical shortcomings;• data analysis problems;• inadequacies in literature reviews;• insufficient clarity of focus;• conceptual confusion;• parochial blinkers (manuscripts needed to make the local nature of

their research, or their terminology, more meaningful for a wideraudience);

• does not add to the international research literature;• failure to link findings to the research literature;• lack of critical reflection on implicit assumptions;• victory claims (overly optimistic or totally positive reporting that

needed to acknowledge the complexity and diversity in the data).(Alton-Lee 1998: 888–90)

Given the confidential and personal nature of the peer-review process,it is not surprising that research students rarely see referees’ reports onothers’ work (but see Cambridge 1994). Here, I provide a complete ref-eree’s report following the submission of a manuscript to an educationaljournal. The manuscript described the educational aims of a website that was designed to assist the development of students’ research skills.For reasons that will become obvious, the manuscript was eventuallypublished elsewhere (Finn and Crook 2003, http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/journal/vol2/index.htm) and it may be useful to view it in order to fully appreciatethe comments.



Box 6.3 Example of a referee’s report

The following is an extract from a report (by the editor, in thiscase) on a manuscript submitted to an educational journal in theUK.

May I first thank you very much for your paper. How we deal withhelping students to prepare for any piece of research, whether atUG, PG or PhD level is a fascinating topic, and the points thatyou raise are food for thought. I have looked at the website, and itis good to see that you have put such material online for learners.There are some very good exercises, and some useful reading aboutthe matter. Putting online what should (but perhaps is not always!)be done by us, as lecturers, prior to the students starting their finalyear project is good practice indeed . . .

. . . But, back to the paper more generally. It appears to me thatthis is a description of how you put online the material that, inmost disciplines I guess, is provided by way of seminars, handoutsand the like. And, in various ways, and with varying degrees ofsuccess (whatever success means) our learners somehow get theirfinal year project done. In its current format, this paper is in essencea report on what you did to make available, via the web, thematerial/exercises that form part of a normal module/course. Asyet, it is not quite a description of a piece of research and, for amore ‘traditional’ journal such as ours, papers normally describe a piece of research.

. . . That said, there is a paper waiting to emerge here! It is just that you have submitted it too early! At the moment it is a description of (very good) practice. In order to turn it intosomething more ‘research-y’, you need to address the very issue thatyou raise in the last paragraph, that is, to provide evidence that sucha system is an effective learning aid. For this, you need to measureit in some way. So, it would be great to monitor the use of youronline material, and to compare performance (but not just ofmarks; that would be too narrow a view of ‘success’) of learners whohave used the system against the performance of those who did not(students from previous years). Or, perhaps, look at what kind(s)of students use such a system. As an example, do more males thanfemales use it, and in what way(s)? Do older/younger students

The above example is particularly polite, and there is a considerable levelof constructive and helpful criticism. Not all referees are so polite in theirreports; however, the provision of constructive criticism is not unusual,


access/use it more? Does background influence its use? Whatexercises did students use more than others? One hypothesis (ofmany) could thus be something along the lines of ‘would theperformance of students’ x, y and z skills be improved by their useof such a system?’ (And in what way?) Evidence could be gatheredfrom monitoring use of the system itself, from students, and fromsupervisors, of course. The literature review would thus need to be much more focused on what we know/do not know about suchskills, rather than, at present, making the argument for ComputerAided Learning (CAL). The argument for CAL has already beenmade (it is widely used); we now need to scope down and say how,precisely, it helps/does not. I would also suggest that you omit thescience/non-science education bit; this takes you off track (and isanother paper entirely).

I am therefore very sorry to say that, given that the research isnot yet done, your paper cannot be considered for possiblepublication in the Journal. That said, I would be very interested tolook at any study you do at a later date. Given the sheer volumeof articles submitted to the Journal for consideration, we are nowhaving to reject more than three-quarters of these. Many wouldregard this as an accolade for the Journal in that it shows that weare able to select very high quality material, but I know that thisalso has a human cost.

I trust that this will not deter you from writing further articlesand submitting them to the journal in the future. Once again, mayI thank you for your article.

Exercise 6.1

1 Why was the manuscript discussed in Box 6.3 rejected?2 Were there obvious reasons for the rejection?3 How would you describe the tone of this report?

even for a rejected manuscript. Of course, not all referees will take (orhave) the time for this level of feedback, but the chances of getting suchuseful feedback are reduced if the submitted manuscript is poorly preparedand of low quality.

The following extracts are from five different reports that I have either written as a referee or received; I provide them to give some other examples of the deciding factors behind the assessment of thesemanuscripts, and a wider sample of the tone of reports. Although theseextracts are from assessments of ecological research, many of the corecriticisms are generic in their applicability (see Alton-Lee 1998).


Box 6.4 Selected extracts from several referees’ reports

Example 1

No hypotheses are presented, which hinders an evaluation of theresearch. In general, I am not at all convinced by the chain ofinference in the discussion. The conclusions rest on a reasonablysmall data set in one location, and are quite speculative. At thevery least, a much more cautious tone should be present. The titleis not appropriate and should be far more modest. Overall, this isa very descriptive piece of research that will only be of interest toa specialist audience. As such, and with some improvements, themanuscript is more suited to another journal. Nevertheless, I hopethat the authors may benefit from the following comments: . . .

Example 2

Overall, I consider that this paper makes a positive contributionto this research topic, and improves understanding of the processesand associated methodology. Given the potentially contentiousnature of this research, I would strongly suggest that some extrainformation is provided that anticipates potential doubts/criti-cisms. For example, in Section 2.2, please provide assurance that the animals had not received any parasiticide treatment inprevious 6 months/12 months (or whatever period is appropriate).In the same section, provide some form of assurance that the threeseparate paddocks received consistent management prior to andduring the experiments (or some other appropriate statement), e.g.


that feeding regimes, grass composition and soils, etc. were ‘sub-stantially equivalent’ across the three paddocks. This would helpovercome suspicion that differences amongst the three paddockswere responsible for the treatment differences.

Example 3

I find this paper to be a premature reporting of results that requiremore detailed data to support the conclusions. It seems that a majormotivation for this paper centres about whether the food source isa ‘rare’ or ‘common’ resource. Unfortunately, there are no datapresented with which to evaluate the rarity or otherwise of the foodresource. I am somewhat sceptical of the generality of the resultsthat are presented, given the single sampling occasion, and therenowned heterogeneity in such data sets.

Specific comments:

• The Introduction needs to explain more clearly what is thehypothesis under investigation, and why the investigation isof importance.

• Some indication of the approximate size of the differentresource types should be provided.

• In some parts, the English needs improving. • Table 1: the reader should, at least, be able to determine the

sample size of each category that was sampled. • Table 2: round off values to nearest integer (‘percentage’

incorrectly spelled in legend).

Example 4

This manuscript addresses an important topic. As I have workedon the question myself, I can confirm that the one question alwaysto surface after a talk is to what extent these ecological processesare likely to reflect the influence of competition. This manuscriptwill keep me from shrugging my shoulders. The authors make anexcellent job in summarising available knowledge: I find their texttimely, concise and suitably critical. Nevertheless, I have a fewqueries, which I have listed in perceived order of importance . . .

The journal editor will forward the referees’ comments to the corre-sponding author. The editor will inform you whether the manuscript isaccepted with no, minor or major revision, or may politely decline toaccept the manuscript. At this point, you may feel elated, devastated or,more usually, somewhere in-between.

If you are unhappy with the response, don’t do anything rash! Readthe referees’ comments thoroughly, put them aside for a day or two andread them again. If both referees make the same points, then you willhave to address these points fully, and most points that referees make will be valid and useful in improving the quality of your manuscript.When the referees disagree in their recommendations, the editor mayeither make a decision or send the manuscript to another referee.However, it is reasonably common that a referee may misinterpret apoint, and consequently may make what you consider to be an inappro-priate request or suggestion. In such cases, you are entitled to (politely!)point this out to the editor, and you should indicate where you havemodified the text to avoid a repeat of such a misunderstanding. Don’trespond to the editor without all co-authors having agreed on the contentof the reply to the editor, and having agreed to all changes to the originalmanuscript.

See Bem (1995, available at http://comp9.psych.cornell.edu/dbem/psych_bull.html) for further discussion and some examples of the rightand wrong way to respond to referees’ comments (see also Box 6.5). Areproduction of the correspondence between an author, two referees and


Example 5

The study contains a large amount of data that should be ofconsiderable interest to a specialist group. Indeed, following somerevision, I consider that the paper is better suited for publicationin another journal . . . There should be clearly stated hypothesesin the Introduction, not just aims. The Results (and some of theDiscussion) section is detail-laden and presented in a largelyundigested form, and needs to be condensed for publication. Thereare parts that have a very selective presentation of the results and statistics, e.g. focusing on the significant differences only.. . . The aims of some of the statistical analyses need to be statedmore explicitly. . . . The Figure and Table legends should be moreexplanatory.

the editor of the Journal of Teaching Writing provides further examples ofacademic discourse that occurs among these different groups as part ofthe publication of a manuscript (Cambridge 1994).

Publication

Having made the necessary revisions and assuming that the resubmittedmanuscript has been accepted for publication, the manuscript goes to thepublishers. Some time after submission, ‘galley proofs’ of the journalarticle will be posted or emailed to the corresponding author. Galleyproofs are a draft version of how the article will appear in the journal. Itis very important that you meticulously proofread the galley proofs – anymistakes that remain will appear in the printed version, for every readerto see. At this stage, you will have an opportunity to correct any minortypographical or grammatical errors that were in the final submission.However, you need to be vigilant for errors that may have been intro-duced during the typesetting process. These can be quite subtle, e.g. a


Box 6.5 Responses to referee’s comments

The following extract from Bem (1995) gives an example of twovery different responses to a referee’s comments:

Wrong approach: ‘Reviewer A is obviously Melanie Grimes, whohas never liked me or my work. If she really thinks that behavioristprinciples solve all the problems of obsessive-compulsive disorders,then let her write her own review. Mine is about the cognitiveprocesses involved.’

Right approach: ‘As the critical remarks by Reviewer A indicate,this is a contentious area, with different theorists staking out strong positions. Apparently I did not make it clear that my reviewwas intended only to cover the cognitive processes involved in obsessive-compulsive disorders and not to engage the debatebetween cognitive and behavioral approaches. To clarify this, Ihave now included the word “cognitive” in both the title andabstract, taken note of the debate in my introduction, and statedexplicitly that the review will not undertake a comparative reviewof the two approaches. I hope this is satisfactory.’

comma is replaced by an apostrophe, a semi-colon disappears, notationin an equation may not be correct (potentially disastrous), references maynot appear in the References section, or a letter may disappear from aword. Pay particular attention to tables, figures and their legends. To befair, these mistakes are very rare; however, this makes them more difficultto detect. The editors and typesetters are far more likely to find yourmistakes that were in the submitted manuscript.

After the corresponding author receives the galley proofs, a quickresponse is usually required, e.g. publishers request that you return the proofs and any corrections within 2–4 days. The article is now ‘inpress’.

After returning the galley proofs and any necessary corrections, thearticle will appear in the journal soon after (from weeks to months). Afew weeks after publication, the corresponding author will receive anumber of offprints (copies of the article) from the journal, as indicatedin their ‘Instructions to Authors’. Some journals provide a limitednumber (e.g. 25–50) of offprints for free, whereas others will requirepayment. Other researchers with an interest in your work are likely torequest offprints from the corresponding author. You should provide allof the co-authors with some offprints, and it is courteous to send a copyto individuals who assisted with the work.

Conclusion

Remember that journals need a supply of manuscripts. If you can producea manuscript that competently describes good quality research that falls within the scope of the journal, then you are quite likely to get yourmanuscript published. Note the ‘If’ in the preceding sentence. It isimportant that you can write and present data appropriately, are awareof what constitutes research ‘quality’ and select a suitable journal. It may be hard to believe if you are about to write your first paper, but by the time you publish your third or fourth paper you will be much more at ease with the protocols of publishing, and more focused on theresearch content of the manuscript – and enjoying the publication of yourresearch.


Recommended reading

Publications

Berry, R. (1986) How to Write a Research Paper, Oxford: Pergamon.

Booth, V. (1993) Communicating in Science: Writing a Scientific Paper and Speakingat Scientific Meetings, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Highly recommended, and applicable to most research disciplines.

Day, R.A. (1998) How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 5th edn, Westport,CT: Oryx Press.

Online resources

‘Writing articles for scientific journals: a basic guide’ by J. W. Stirling.http://www.aims.org.au/journal/write.html

‘How to write a scholarly research report’, online journal article by Lawrence M.Rudner and William D. Schafer (1999) Practical Assessment, Research &Evaluation, 6: article 13.

http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=6&n=13

‘Authorship ethics’ by K.L. Syrett and L.M. Rudner (1996) Practical Assessment,Research & Evaluation, vol. 5, article 1.

http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=5&n=1

‘The ethics of authorship: does it take a village to write a paper?’ by GlennMcGee.

http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2001/03/28/7

‘How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers’ by Tim Albertand Elizabeth Wager.

http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/cope2003/pages2003/AdvicetoAuthors.pdf


Chapter 7

The PhD examinationprocess

Introduction

In Chapter 1, the expected standard of the PhD degree was discussed.This chapter focuses on the actual examination practices and criteria thatare used by examiners to judge whether the requirements for the awardof a PhD have been satisfied. Your awareness of the practices of PhDexaminers is important: as a candidate for the PhD examination, youneed to know the criteria with which PhD examiners assess your doctoralresearch. Such knowledge will make you further aware of the standardsthat your research and thesis must attain.

In this chapter, I provide an overview of the different aims of the PhDexamination and the examination process. I draw attention to thedominant role of the thesis in the PhD examination, even when an oralexamination (viva) is held. I discuss the examination practices andcriteria adopted by examiners as they assess both the thesis and the viva.

Aims of the PhD examination

Although the PhD examination provides a single result, the process canbe comprised of two parts: (a) the examiners’ reading of the thesis; and(b) the oral examination. Some universities do not normally conduct anoral examination; however, for the purposes of this chapter, I assume thatan oral examination will be conducted.

Overall, the PhD examination is intended to do the following:

• ensure that the institutional requirements of the thesis are satisfied(for example, the correct format and presentation have beenadopted);

• ensure that the work has been conducted by the candidate;

• ensure that the thesis demonstrates an original contribution toknowledge;

• ensure that the candidate has a thorough understanding of the con-cepts, theories, methodologies and applications (where appropriate)of their subject;

• ensure that the candidate is aware of how the thesis advances theirsubject;

• ensure either that the research is of sufficient quality to be potentiallypublishable, or, where publication is a requirement, ensure theresearch has been published;

• assess (grade) the candidate’s thesis;• provide discussion and feedback that may help improve the work for

subsequent publication;• acknowledge the candidate’s entry to a community of scholarship

(most relevant where a viva occurs).

The ultimate aim of the PhD examination is to judge whether thecandidate is capable of independently conducting high quality research:‘Above all, examiners tend to want to be satisfied that the researcher has become an expert in the chosen field and has demonstrated com-petence to do the kind of research that s/he set out to do’ (Lawton 1997: 17).

The examination process

One of the common features of the examination process is the appoint-ment of an external examiner who usually plays a dominant role in the examination of the PhD. The external examiner is typically selectedon the basis of criteria that relate to academic credentials, researchexperience, experience in examining and independence (Tinkler andJackson 2000). As might be expected, there is considerable variation inthe extent to which the selection criteria of the external examiner arestated in university regulations and interpreted by academics. Never-theless, the intention of such regulations is: ‘the fostering of impartiality,the preservation of common academic standards and the making andperformance of community’ (ibid.: 172). In addition to the externalexaminer, at least one internal examiner is usually appointed from youruniversity department.

The following is a description (from an Australian study) of howexaminers typically deal with a thesis that is sent to them:

158 The PhD examination process

[D]ifferent examiners approach the task differently, but mostexaminers begin by reading the abstract, introduction and con-clusion to gauge the scope of the work, and by looking at thereferences to see what sources have been used and whether they needto follow up on any of them. They then read from cover to cover,taking detailed notes, and finally go back over the thesis to checkon whether their questions have been answered or whether theircriticisms are justified.

(Mullins and Kiley 2002: 376)

The important output from the examiners’ reading of the thesis is a reporton the thesis from each examiner. Each examiner also comments on thecandidate’s thesis under a number of categories. Although the categorieswill depend on the university’s specific criteria, these typically include:the presentation of the thesis, originality, contribution to knowledge,evidence of critical thinking and evidence of publishable material. Inaddition, the examiner’s report usually provides a provisional recommen-dation on the grade of the thesis. The examiners’ reports are submitted(usually independently) to the appropriate university committee.

The viva takes place some time after the examiners’ reports have beensubmitted. Following the viva, the examiners submit a joint report or, ifthey cannot agree, separate reports.

The details of the examination process display considerable variationacross universities, and it is imperative that you know the process thatoperates in your university. Your supervisor will be an important sourceof guidance (see also Exercises 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3).

The PhD examination process 159

Exercise 7.1

This exercise aims to heighten your awareness of the submissionand examination process for the thesis.

Discuss the examination process with your supervisor. Thefollowing questions may help guide the discussion:

1 Do I have a copy of the university documents that stipulatethe regulations regarding the submission of theses and do Ifully understand them?

The thesis is the main focus of assessment

When discussing the examination of the PhD, many of your fellowstudents and other researchers may focus their discussions on the oralexamination; this is not surprising as many students are understandablyanxious about the viva (usually more because of a fear of the unknownrather than fear of failing). The oral examination is prominent in theminds of PhD candidates, because the face-to-face and immediate natureof the viva makes it a more intense emotional experience than thesubmission of the thesis.

However, a word of caution is in order. The crucial examination of your PhD candidacy is that of the thesis, not the viva. This point was raisedin Chapter 5 in the context of the impact of structure and presentationof the thesis on an examiner. It is worth reiterating the research findingthat most examiners do not change their opinion of the thesis that isformed before the viva:

Forty per cent of examiners . . . said that the decision about the thesiswas made before the viva. In 74% of cases the viva served merely toconfirm the examiners’ opinions of the candidate. . . . Where theviva did influence the examiners, this did not necessarily influencethe examiners’ decision.

(Jackson and Tinkler 2001: 361)

Jackson and Tinkler’s (2001) finding was based on the experience ofexaminers in the social sciences. However, I suggest that the examinationprocess indicates that the importance of the thesis prevails across a varietyof disciplines. A revealing insight is that on the basis of the thesis alone,examiners produce a report and make a recommendation on the outcomeof the result. Therefore, regardless of the degree of importance attachedto the viva, an examiner’s reading of the thesis cannot fail to govern their


2 Have I obtained a copy of any available guidance to PhDexaminers or the template for the examiner’s report form?

3 When are the deadlines for the submission of theses?4 Where do I submit the thesis?5 How many copies must be submitted?6 What accompanying documentation will be required?7 Is there an examination fee, and how much is it?

approach to the viva. This conclusion is ‘based upon logic rather thanevidence’ (Trafford and Leshem 2002: 40). For example, based on thethesis, the examiner will approach the oral examination with animpression that the candidate is a clear fail, a clear pass or a borderlinecase. It is probably in the latter case that the viva makes the greatestcontribution to determining the awarded grade:

The decision as to whether or not the thesis is up to the requiredstandard is tentatively taken before the oral examination. However,a poor performance in the oral may lead the examiners to questiontheir decision, while a good performance can boost an unfavourableone into a pass.

(Cryer 2000: 239)

Therefore, while you must take the viva seriously and prepare adequatelyfor it as an examination, it is more important that you first submit yourwritten thesis with a clear understanding that it is the thesis that willdominate the assessment of your doctoral research.

What are the examination criteria?

The judgement of the PhD examiner will always remain an importantelement of the examination process; however, this judgement will be more objectively applied where clear guidelines or criteria for theexamination are provided. In the absence of guidance and criteria, theexamination of candidates becomes dependent on the ‘gut feeling’ of examiners; effectively, candidates in such a situation ‘are being askedto second-guess how an examiner’s gut might feel’ (Winter et al. 2000:29). There has been a steady improvement in the provision by uni-versities of guidelines and criteria for the award of postgraduate degrees.You should find out as much as you can about the criteria by which yourthesis will be judged, so that you can be confident of attaining theexamination standard. Universities also provide such guidelines toexaminers, so that PhD candidates and examiners can be confident that they are addressing the criteria by which the PhD degree is to beexamined.

A questionnaire distributed to thirty-one PhD examiners across avariety of disciplines in the UK revealed considerable consistency in thecriteria used by examiners when assessing the PhD thesis. These criteriaincluded:


• conceptual clarity in the design, conduct and analysis of the research;• intellectual appreciation of the conceptual and theoretical basis of

the research, and its limitations and wider significance;• coherence of argument throughout the thesis;• appropriate engagement with the literature;• grasp of methodology;• presentation of the thesis and compliance with academic conven-

tions;• originality;• potential for publication.

(Winter et al. 2000: 32–5)

The Institute of Education, University of London, provides its PhDstudents with relatively detailed guidance on the criteria that are typicallyused by PhD examiners (see Box 7.1). These criteria should be extremelyuseful, not least as an excellent basis for discussion with your supervisoron the criteria that are typically used in your university.


Box 7.1 Criteria for assessing a PhD thesis

The following text is reproduced with kind permission of theInstitute of Education, University of London.

Criteria for assessing a PhD thesis

Although different examiners will adopt different methods ofexamining the thesis and for conducting the oral examination,there are some general criteria for evaluating PhD theses whichmay be useful for students to bear in mind. These are some of thecriteria which will be used by examiners when assessing the PhDthesis.

1 Presentation and clarity

• The reader should be able to read the text without difficulty.• The text should be clear and ‘tell a story’.• The submission should be ‘user friendly’. The reader should be

able to find his or her way around the submission, locatingtables and figures, and being able to cross-reference with ease.


A numbering system for chapters, sections, and, sometimes,paragraphs can be very helpful.

• The style should be economic without unnecessary dupli-cation or repetition.

• The bibliography and/or reference list should be complete andaccurate.

• It should be possible to gain easy access to tables and figuresrelating to particular passages in the text, and to examine bothdata and commentary without effort.

• The submission should be no longer than necessary. Typicallythis will mean 75–80,000 words for a PhD, with an absolutemaximum of 100,000 words.*

2 Integration and coherence

There should be logical and rational links between the componentparts of the thesis. In some cases coherence will be achieved by aseries of empirical studies or analyses which build one upon theother. In other words, there will be an intellectual wholeness tothe submission.

3 Contribution to knowledge

A submission for a PhD should be approximately equivalent inquantity and quality to at least two articles* of a standard accept-able to a fully refereed journal. Where candidates have already had portions of their doctoral work accepted for publication in such journals, this is prima facie evidence of an adequate standard.Alternatively, the submission should be substantial enough to beable to form the basis of a book or research monograph which couldmeet the standards of an established academic publisher operatinga system of critical peer review for book proposals and drafts*.

4 Originality and creativity

The research and the written submission should be the candidate’sown work. However, the degree of independence shown may varyaccording to the research topic, since in some instances students


will be working as part of a larger team, while in other instancesthey will be completely on their own. A candidate should show anappropriate level of independent working.

5 Review of relevant literature

Candidates should demonstrate that they have detailed knowledgeof original sources, have a thorough knowledge of the field, andunderstand the main theoretical and methodological issues. Thereshould not be undue dependence on secondary sources.

The literature review should be more than a catalogue of theliterature. It should contain a critical, analytic approach, with anunderstanding of sources of error and differences of opinion. Theliterature review should not be over-inclusive. It should not covernon-essential literature nor contain irrelevant digressions. Studiesrecognised as key or seminal in the field of enquiry should not beignored. However, a student should not be penalised for omittingto review research published immediately before the thesis wassubmitted.

A good literature review will be succinct, penetrating andchallenging to read.

6 Statement of the research problem

The literature review should have revealed some questions or issueswhich call for further investigation. Ideally, the problem to betackled in the research should emerge naturally and inexorablyfrom the literature review.

The research problem may arise as a result of past work whichneeds to be improved upon. It may be that there is a crucial testwhich will help to decide between competing theories. Thecandidate may:

• be proposing a novel theoretical or methodological slant on atopic;

• have created an interesting intellectual friction by bringingtogether hitherto unrelated fields or topics;

• or have developed a new area of application for a method ortheory.


A clear and succinct statement of the research problem should bemade, together with a set of specific hypotheses, predictions, orquestions which the research is designed to address.

There should be some sense that the problem which has beenidentified is worthwhile.

7 Methods of enquiry adopted

Since determination of the most appropriate methodology is notalways a straightforward matter, candidates should justify themethods chosen, with an appropriate rationale in each case.

A project may have a mixture of methodologies, suited to the changing needs of the project as it develops. There may, forinstance, be initial semi-structured interviews yielding qualitativedata, which can be analysed in a sensitive fashion to yield thebuilding blocks for a more quantitative approach. Or, alternatively,the student may start out with an established quantitative method-ology, decide it is inappropriate, and then move to qualitativemethods to elicit new questions or issues. There are many variants.Potential alternative methods should be rejected on the basis of areasoned case.

Candidates should be able to demonstrate that the methodsused have been chosen through a conscious process of deliberation;and that the criteria for, and advantages and disadvantages of,particular choices of method are well specified.

There should be a sense of planning. This should include areasoned consideration of the analytic techniques that the methodschosen will require.

8 Analysis of data

• The analytic methods used need to be justified and need to beshown to be sufficient for the task.

• Any problems arising in the analysis should be recognised andtackled appropriately.

• Candidates should show sensitivity to problems of reliability,measurement error and sources of bias.


• Candidates should understand the assumptions behind the testor tests used.

• Where appropriate, candidates should demonstrate imagi-nation and creativity in identifying and analysing emergentproperties of the data which may not have been foreseen.

• The analyses should be clearly linked to the explicit hypothe-ses, predictions, or questions which formed part of the statedresearch problem.

• Candidates should be able to demonstrate judgement in thepresentation of key summary data within the body of the text,assigning primary data and data of secondary importance toappendices.

• The data should be presented in a well-structured way, so thata clear presentational sequence unfolds.

• In sum, candidates should be able to demonstrate WHY eachparticular analysis was conducted, HOW the analysis wasdone, and WHAT the analysis tells us about the data.

9 Discussion of outcomes

• The discussion should summarise, without undue repetition,what has been achieved in the research project.

• It should evaluate the project’s contribution to the researcharea.

• Links should be drawn between the candidate’s own work andthe work reviewed in the literature review.

• The main findings should be interpreted and related to theory(and practice where appropriate).

• There should be reflection on the research process as a whole.This reveals what the candidate has learned during the courseof the work.

• In many cases it will be appropriate to include a section inwhich the candidate discusses the limitations of the researchdesign and methodology in the light of knowledge acquiredwhilst undertaking the research, and outlines alternative oradditional approaches which might be pursued.

• There should be some pointers to future work, either by thecandidate or by others.

As another example, James Cook University provides a Handbook forResearch Higher Degree Students (available at http://www.jcu.edu.au/courses/handbooks/research/), which provides guidelines for PhDstudents. Appendix G provides guidance on the nature of the PhD, withconsideration of the differences that may occur across faculties. BothAppendix I, ‘PhD examiner information’, and Appendix K, ‘Criteria forPhD examiners summary sheet’, illustrate the information and guidanceon examination criteria for PhD examiners at James Cook University.

The oral examination (viva)

In different countries and institutions there are different conventions andpractices that relate to the viva. In some countries, there is a publicdefence at which the examiners, members of academic staff and perhapsmembers of the public can attend. In other countries, the viva is a moreprivate occasion at which only a small number of examiners attend. Here,I focus on the common principles that pertain to the purpose of the viva,which combine elements of quality control, assessment and a rite ofpassage.


• An attempt should be made to identify issues which requirefurther clarification.

* Such detailed requirements vary among universities, and youmust check the relevant requirements of your university.

Exercise 7.2

1 As a high priority task, find out whether your universityprovides guidance (similar to that in Box 7.1) on the criteriaused by examiners to assess the PhD thesis. Discuss thesecriteria with your supervisor, with reference to your PhDthesis.

2 If your university does not provide detailed guidance, thendiscuss with your supervisor the relevance and applicabilityof criteria in Box 7.1 to the assessment of PhD theses in youruniversity.

Aims of the oral examination (viva)

One of the functions of the rigorous questioning that characterises thePhD viva is to establish that the thesis is the student’s own work (althoughthe need to establish this is very rare). A more common function of theviva is to establish whether the student can explain their understandingof the research background and findings, and justify the methodology thatwas used. This is particularly important in cases where students have notexpressed themselves adequately in the written thesis, and the provisionalrecommendation is a borderline one. In universities where a viva is notnormally held, the examiner often has the right to request that a viva isconducted so that the candidate can better clarify and explain theirresearch.

Another very common function of the viva is to allow a mature anddetailed academic discussion between the examiners and the candidate.Such discussion signals the candidate’s entry to a community of scholar-ship and also provides useful feedback that may help improve subsequentpublication of the research. This aspect is often under-appreciated bystudents, who are understandably nervous about the viva as an exami-nation that results in a pass or fail result. Nevertheless, despite beingnervous beforehand, many students find the viva to be an intellectuallystimulating and rewarding experience; some students enjoy the viva! Itis not often that you get an opportunity to have a focused discussion onyour research with a small group of experts. Your years of research andintellectual development should mean that you are a world expert in yourarea of research – whether you realise it or not. The examiners will begenuinely interested in hearing about your new ideas, discussing them,clarifying them and, if necessary, suggesting further improvements.

Preparing for the viva: what kind of questions areasked?

From an analysis of questions that were asked by PhD examiners intwenty-five doctoral vivas, Trafford and Leshem (2002) identified pre-dictable, generic questions that investigate the achievement of a doctorallevel of research. These questions were identified from a variety of subjectdisciplines: education, applied sciences, management, bio-medicine,business, history, marketing and psychology. The questions are especiallyuseful because they are conceptual in nature and address the essentialcharacteristics of doctoral research. The generic questions (in bold) arefollowed by a number of questions that elaborate on the theme of thegeneric question:


‘Why did you choose this topic for your doctoral study?’

‘How did you arrive at your conceptual framework?’• What led you to select these models of . . . ? • What are the theoretical components of your framework?• How did you decide upon the variables to include in your

conceptual framework?• How did concepts assist you to visualise and explain what you

intended to investigate?• How did you use your conceptual framework to design your

research and analyse your findings?

‘How did you arrive at your research design?’• What other forms of research did you consider?• How would you explain your research approach?• Why did you select this particular design for your research?• What is the link between your conceptual framework and

your choice of methodology and how would you defend thatmethodology?

• Can you explain where the data can be found and why yourdesign is the most appropriate way of accessing that data?

‘How would you justify your choice of methodology?’• Please explain your methodology to us. • Why did you present this in the form of a case study?• What choices of research approach did you consider as you

planned your research?• Can you tell us about the ‘quasi-experimental’ research that you

used?• I did not watch your video until after reading your thesis. I wish

that I had viewed it earlier – it was very good. Why did youdecide to include a video in your thesis? What was its role?

‘Why did you decide to use XYZ as your main instrument(s)?’• How do your methods relate to your conceptual framework?• Why did you choose to use those methods of data collection?• What other methods did you consider and why were they

rejected?• How did you handle the data that came from open-ended

questions?• Tell us how you managed to achieve a 100 per cent response


rate from your respondents, who, as adolescents in schools, arenot known for complying with such requests!

‘How did you select your respondents/materials?’• How did you decide upon your research boundaries?• What was the Universe from which your sample was selected

and how did you define it?• What is the relationship between your respondents, the research

design and the conceptual framework?• Why did you choose these respondents rather than other

respondents – how do you justify that choice?

‘How did you arrive at your conceptual conclusions?’• What are your conceptual conclusions?• Were you disappointed with your conclusions?• How do your conclusions relate to your conceptual framework?• How did you distinguish between your factual and conceptual

conclusions?

‘How generalisable are your findings – and why?’• How did you triangulate your data?• Were you objective or subjective in your role as a researcher? • How did you relate the various stages of your research one to

another?• How did you analyse your data, and how did you arrive at

meanings from that analysis?

‘What is your contribution to knowledge?’• How important are your findings – and to whom?• How do your major conclusions link to the work of Rose? (for

instance).• The absence of evidence is not support for what you were inves-

tigating, nor is it confirmation of the opposite view. So how doyou explain your research outcomes?

‘We would like you to criticise your thesis for us.’• How else might you have undertaken your research?• What are the strengths and weaknesses of your research?• What would you do differently if you repeated your research?

‘What are YOU going to do after you gain your doctorate?’• Why did you really want to undertake doctoral study?


• How is gaining your doctorate going to advance your career?• What are you going to publish from your thesis? (If you have not

already thought about this question – please do so now!)

‘Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about yourthesis which you have not had the opportunity to tell us duringthe viva?’

(Trafford and Leshem 2002: 40–6; kindly provided by the authors, and reproduced with permission from

Higher Education Review (Tyrell Burgess Associates))

Of course, these precise questions may not be asked in your viva; however,very similar questions will aim to assess your understanding of thesefundamental issues. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you use thesequestions to inform your preparation for your viva. Consider how toanswer these questions in the context of your own work, and think aboutother variations of these questions that may be more appropriate to yourresearch.

In addition to the ‘big issues’ identified by the above questions, youcan expect other quite specific questions that investigate your depth ofknowledge or the thoroughness of your general understanding. Being lesspredictable, such questions are obviously quite difficult to prepare for, andyou will have to trust in your preparation and learning. Nevertheless, yourpreparation should not overlook some of the more obvious aspects of yourresearch. Some examples from students’ vivas include the following:

• being asked to discuss some important or controversial papers thatwere referred to in the thesis;

• being asked to discuss the methodology that was used in an impor-tant reference that appeared in the thesis;

• being asked to explain the assumptions and limitations of, forexample, an analytical technique or statistical test used in the thesis.


Exercise 7.3

The following checklist prompts you to consider some of theinformation that you should have in advance of the viva.

Do I have a copy of the university documents that stipulate theregulations regarding the conduct of the viva?

continued


Have I discussed these regulations with my supervisor?Have I discussed these regulations and the viva with other students

(some of whom may have completed their viva)?When are the deadlines for the submission of theses?Where do I submit the thesis?How many copies are required?What accompanying documentation will be required?Is there an examination fee, and how much is it?Who will be present at the viva?What are the selection criteria and responsibilities of the internal

and external examiners?Who selects the internal and external examiners?Is it possible for me to suggest a person who would be an appro-

priate examiner? Is it possible for me to indicate a person who is likely to be

nominated as an examiner but would be inappropriate (forgood reasons)?

Who will inform me of the selection of the examiners, and when?When the external examiner is made known to me, am I familiar

with their research and how their work may complement orconflict with mine?

Am I permitted to view the examiner’s report before the viva?Have I discussed my preparation for the viva with my supervisor? Does my supervisor agree with my identification of the original

contribution to knowledge of my thesis?Am I satisfied that I can answer questions similar to those

identified by Trafford and Leshem (2002, see above)?Where will the viva take place (building and room number)?Will I be expected to make a presentation; if not, can I request to

give one?At what time will the viva take place?Where should I wait before the viva?Who will be chairman at the viva?Will there be a short break after one hour (for example)?After the viva, will I be expected to attend a reception/meal with

the examiners?

You may receive further information from your supervisor, other studentsand students who have recently completed the viva.

General advice for the viva

The external examiner may (more usually) or may not chair the oralexam, and usually asks the majority of the questions. The externalexaminer is typically a recognised expert in a research discipline relevantto the thesis. Also in attendance is an internal examiner, who will alsoask questions. Your supervisor may or may not be present. The details ofpractice vary among universities, and you will almost certainly be wellinformed about the particular practices that occur in your department. Ifnot, ask well in advance to be sure that you are aware of what will happen.No two vivas are the same; nevertheless, while the following generalcomments may not apply in every viva, they are indicative of typicalpatterns.

You should know who the external examiner will be, well before theviva. You may have communicated with the person during your research,and may have met them at a conference or meeting. In such cases, youare likely to be reasonably familiar with the external examiner’s back-ground. If not, become familiar with their research interests, read theirmain publications, and identify common interests (or disagreements)between their work and yours.

In terms of duration, most vivas last between one and three hours. Theatmosphere in a PhD viva is usually professional, but courteous to thepoint of being friendly. Some examiners may be more formal than others,but most will want to put you at ease; this is where some knowledge aboutthe examination style of the examiner will be particularly helpful.Unfortunately, there are horror stories of exceptionally confrontationalexaminers; on the whole, these are uncommon. On the other hand, don’tlet your guard down because the examiners are very pleasant and friendly.The examiners have an important job to do, and academics can be adeptat veiling their strong questioning or criticism.

Above all else, be prepared. Read the generic questions identified byTrafford and Leshem (2002, reproduced above) and consider how youwould answer these and similar questions as they apply to your research.Ask your supervisor for help in preparing for the viva.

On the day of the viva, bring a copy of your thesis, a pen and blankpaper with you. You may be asked to refer to certain sections of the thesis(if so, you should be given time to read these sections). The pages of yourcopy of the thesis should be numbered the same as the examiners’ copies,


which will aid reference. It may be helpful to have labelled ‘Post-it’ notesindicating the beginning of chapters or sections that you consider areparticularly important or likely to be referred to.

In many countries, it is traditional for the student to make a pre-sentation (which is sometimes quite lengthy) of their research findings.In countries where this has not been traditional practice, it is becomingmore common for a short presentation to be made at the viva. Makingan oral presentation temporarily puts you in control, and is an oppor-tunity for you to impress (as one example of relevant advice, see Booth1993); however, ensure that you are well prepared, have practised thepresentation beforehand and are familiar with the available facilities. Forthose making an electronic presentation, it would be prudent to have anoverhead projector and transparencies on standby, just in case.

The viva proper is characterised by the external and internal examin-ers asking you questions. Listen carefully to the questions. Consider anyquestion for a few moments before answering – don’t blurt out the firstthing that comes into your head. Do not answer simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’ toquestions; on the other hand, do not give a prepared speech. Try toanswer the question as it is put, remembering that you are engaged in anacademic conversation. If you are unsure of the answer to a difficult orspeculative question, then be prepared to admit that you are uncertain,but could speculate on the answer. If you don’t understand the question,ask the examiner to repeat the question, or repeat your interpretation tothe examiner. If you still don’t understand the question, or understandbut can’t answer it, then it is better to admit it than to try and bluff.

It is very important that you are prepared to justify your ideas andconclusions. If the examiners challenge your interpretation but you feel that your case is a good one, muster your arguments and be willingto present your case firmly but courteously. Stay calm and pleasant, and present your points based on the evidence; do not be emotive ordefensive. However, if the examiners have identified a genuine weakness,accept their advice and indicate that this will be addressed. Even if youfeel the examiners are unreasonably critical, do not become argumen-tative or allow the discussion to become heated. You can agree to differand to reconsider the point.

Do not be overly worried that some parts of the exam were verydifficult – it is only by pushing you to your limits that the examiners candetermine your ability.


After the examination

Examination results

The detailed grades of the PhD examination vary among universities,and it is important that you discover all available information andregulations that pertain to your particular university. However, the PhDgrades are likely to reflect the following range:

1 Award of degree without any revision. This is relatively rare. 2 Award of degree subject to minor revision. This is the most common

result, and typically only requires minor typographical corrections,or minimal editorial changes.

3 Award of degree subject to substantial revision (without re-examination).Such a decision usually requires a modest amount of work to rectifylimited deficiencies, e.g. the clarification of several paragraphs orsections, improved presentation, minor changes to some figures or tables, or some data analysis. The examiners may require thesupervisor or Head of Department to ensure that the revision iscompleted. In some cases, the examiners may inspect the thesis(without re-examination) to ensure that the revision is completedto their satisfaction.

4 Major revision required and resubmit thesis with re-examination (a.k.a.a referral). This result may occur when a thesis has been submittedprematurely, and requires further research to be conducted andreported, or an improved presentation of the existing research. Thelatter requirement may involve rewriting, re-analysis and reinter-pretation to an extent that may affect the main conclusions of thethesis. Once the major revision requested by the examiners has beencompleted, it would be expected that the thesis would attain theexpected standard for award of the PhD degree.

5 Award of MPhil. The award of MPhil (a lower degree) may occur incases where the examiners believe that the thesis will not beimproved sufficiently to attain the standard of PhD, but still containssome research of merit. This may be because the submitted thesis islacking in originality or does not make a significant contribution toknowledge. Some revision may be required before award of MPhil.

6 Fail. This is an extremely rare result and would apply to research soseriously flawed that it is irredeemable.

At the end of the oral examination, PhD candidates are requested toleave while the examiners discuss their recommended result. The


candidate is then invited back in and informed of the recommendedresult.

At this stage, most candidates are required to undertake either minoror major revisions. It is important that you receive a written list of therequested revisions, which reduces any potential misunderstanding aboutwhat is expected to attain the required standard. There will be a deadlineby which you will have to complete the revisions, or resubmit the thesis.

Appeals

Here, I simply wish to make you aware that university regulations providedetails of procedures that are available to students to submit an appealagainst a decision not to award a degree, or not to allow resubmission fora degree. Some typical examples of where an appeal might arise include:irregularities in the examination procedures; exceptional circumstancesthat affected your performance, of which the examiners were not awarewhen making their decision; and evidence of prejudice, bias or inade-quate assessment by one of the examiners. Such appeals must usually bemade in writing within a specified duration after the examination, andmust state clearly the evidence on which the appeal is based.


Exercise 7.4

1 You should find out the following information in advance ofthe viva:

(a) Who will inform me of the examiners’ decision, andwhen?

(b) Who will inform me of any revisions that need to bemade?

(c) Will these revisions be provided in a written format so that I am fully aware of the issues that need to beaddressed to bring the thesis up to the required stan-dard?

(d) How soon after the viva is the deadline for submission ofthe final version, with any corrections?

(e) When is the next graduation ceremony?

Professional development for your career

A number of references in the ‘Recommended reading’ list discuss thecareer prospects of PhD students and the transition from being a PhDstudent to the next stage of your career. Your university may also provideinformation and resources to assist with career planning.

After you receive the PhD degree and are seeking employment, it is worth returning to the list of transferable skills in Chapter 1 (Box 1.3) to remind yourself how the doctoral project can contribute to your employability. Related to the identification of transferable skills,Doncaster and Thorne (2000) describe the professional doctorate(DProf), which tends to consist of a structured programme of study, partof which is taught and part of which is based on a dissertation. It is aimedat the professional needs of practitioners to engage in continuingprofessional development – ‘scholarly professionals’ – rather than‘professional scholars’ for whom the traditional PhD tends to be aninitiation into an academic research career. They identified a number ofhigh-level capabilities that describe a variety of high-level skills thatDProf candidates had to implement in the course of their professionalcareer and describe in their dissertation. As many PhD students pursuecareers as ‘scholarly professionals’ (rather than continuing as ‘professionalscholars’), these generic high-level capabilities provide a useful indicationof the standard of performance that a doctoral graduate may aim for in (or expect from) a professional work environment. These capabilitiesinclude:

1 High-level transferable skillsHabitual reflection on own and others professional practiceAwareness of political implications of doctoral workSelf-directed and self-managed learning


2 After the viva:

(a) How much time is permitted before the thesis is to beresubmitted?

(b) If dissatisfied with the conduct of the examination, am I aware of the appeals procedures that relate to the PhDexamination? How soon after the examination must anappeal be lodged?

Ability to tackle unpredictable problems in novel waysAbility to engage in full professional and academic commu-

nication with others in their fieldAbility to evaluate, select, combine and use a range of research

methods Contribute to the development of applied research method-

ology.

2 High-level cognitive abilitiesInterdisciplinary knowledgeThe ability to work at current limits of theoretical and/or

research understanding in particular fieldsThe ability to deal with complexity and contradictions in the

knowledge baseThe ability to synthesise ideas and create responses to problems

that redefine or extend existing knowledgeThe ability to evaluate alternative approaches.

3 Operational contextAbility to function in complex, unpredictable and specialised

work contexts which require innovative studyAutonomy within bounds of professional practice with high

levels of responsibility for self and othersAwareness of ethical dilemmas likely to arise in research and

professional practice The ability to formulate solutions in dialogue with stakeholders.

4 Capacity to bring about organisational change within one’sprofessional practice

Identifying where there is a need for changeDesigning interventions to bring about specified changesImplementing the interventionsEvaluating the interventions for their impact on the targeted

work situationIdentifying further needs for change, etc.

(Doncaster and Thorne 2000: 393–4)

Thus, while the award of DProf requires candidates to demonstrate theirimplementation of these capabilities, I suggest that the PhD graduate may expect to implement such capabilities in their future professionalcareer. Obviously, there are some limitations to the suggestion that thesecapabilities automatically translate into high-level transferable skills for


PhD graduates. Nevertheless, most of these generic capabilities are auseful representation of the challenges and expectations that may facePhD graduates. At the least, these high-level skills should encourage youto think about how your PhD training contributes to your careerdevelopment and helps prepare you for your future profession.

Recommended reading

Publications


See Chapters 20 and 21 ‘Producing your thesis’; ‘Preparing for and conductingyourself in the examination’. See also Chapter 22 ‘Afterwards!’

Murray, R. (2003) How to Survive Your Viva: Defending a Thesis in an OralExamination, Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Tinkler, P. and Jackson, C. (2004) The Doctoral Examination Process: AHandbook for Students, Examiners, and Supervisors, Maidenhead: Society forResearch into Higher Education/Open University Press.

Online resources

‘What goalposts?’ by John Wakeford.http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/postgraduate/story/0,12848,890233,00.html

PhD students’ (negative) experience of PhD examination.

‘After the PhD, what’s next?’ by Carol Ng.http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2002/10/31/2

‘Starting out’ (on a career in research) and ‘Getting on’ by Kirstie Urquhart and‘On the horns of a dilemma’ by Sowmya Viswanathan (and the relatedarticles) discuss the pursuit of a career in academia:

http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2003/09/24/4http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2003/10/08/1http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2003/01/02/2

‘Landing an academic job: the process and the pitfalls’ by Jon Dantzig.http://quattro.me.uiuc.edu/~jon/ACAJOB/Latex2e/academic_job.pdf


Appendix 1

Originality

The following list provides different interpretations of originality in thecontext of doctoral research (modified from Phillips and Pugh 1994:61–2):

1 Setting down a major piece of new information in writing for thefirst time.

2 Continuing a previously original piece of work.3 Carrying out original work designed by the supervisor.4 Providing a single original technique, observation or result in an

otherwise unoriginal but competent piece of research.5 Having many original ideas, methods and interpretation all

performed by others but under the direction of the research student.6 Showing originality in testing someone else’s idea.7 Carrying out empirical work that has not been done before.8 Making a synthesis that has not been done before.9 Using already known material but with a new interpretation.

10 Trying out something in your own country that has previously onlybeen done in other countries.

11 Taking a particular technique and applying it in a new area.12 Bringing new evidence to bear on an old issue.13 Being cross-disciplinary and using different methodologies.14 Looking at areas that people in the discipline have not looked at

before.15 Adding to knowledge in a way that has not previously been done

before.

A list of about twenty interpretations of originality is also provided inWinter et al. (2000), based on a survey of the criteria that PhD examinersuse. Generally, there is considerable overlap with the list by Phillips and

Pugh (1994). Some examples of originality from Winter et al.’s study areas follows:

• Makes an original contribution to knowledge or understanding ofthe subject, in topic area, in method, in experimental design, intheoretical synthesis, or engagement with conceptual issues.

• Contains innovation, speculation, imaginative reconstruction,cognitive excitement: ‘the author has clearly wrestled with themethod, trying to shape it to gain new insights’.

• Is comprehensive in its theoretical linkages or makes novel con-nections between areas of knowledge.

• Is innovative in content and adventurous in method, obviously atthe leading edge in its particular field, with potential for yielding newknowledge.

• Applies established techniques to novel patterns, or devises newtechniques which allow new questions to be addressed.

(Winter et al. 2000: 35)

Appendix 1 181

Appendix 2

Answers to exercises

Exercise 3.4

Publication practices

Hypothetical scenarios raise many different issues that can be discussedand debated. The observations and questions given below suggest justsome of the areas that can be explored.

Contributions to a scientific field are not counted in terms of thenumber of papers. They are counted in terms of significant differences inhow science is understood. With that in mind, Paula and her studentsneed to consider how they are most likely to make a significant contri-bution to their field. One determinant of impact is the coherence andcompleteness of a paper. Paula and her students may need to beginwriting before they can tell whether one or more papers is needed.

In retrospect, Paula and her students might also ask themselves aboutthe process that led to their decision. Should they have discussedpublications much earlier in the process? Were the students led to believethat they would be first authors on published papers? If so, should thatinfluence future work in the lab?

(reproduced from NAS 1995)

Exercise 5.3

Adams, D. (2001)Andrews, D. (2000)Baker, J. (1999)Baker, J. and Adams, S. (1998)Baker, J., Adams, S. and Barrett, T. (1997)

Appendix 2 183

Frank, A. (1987)Frank, G. (1985)Frank, A. and McCann, M. (1980)Gavin, B. (2000)

Exercise 5.4

Brent, E.E. 1986. The computer-assisted literature review. Computers andthe Social Sciences 2: 137–151.

Dewhurst, D.G., Macleod, H.A. and Norris, T.A.M. 2000. Independentstudent learning aided by computers: an acceptable alternative tolectures? Computers and Education 35: 223–241.

Eklundh, K.S. 1994. Linear and non-linear strategies in computer-basedwriting. Computers and Composition 11: 203–216.

Heinich, R., Molenda, M., Russell, J.D. and Smaldino, S.E. 1996.Instructional Media and Technologies for Learning. Englewood Cliffs:Prentice-Hall.

McGowan, C. and Sendall, P. 1997. Using the World Wide Web toenhance writing assignments in introductory chemistry courses.Journal of Chemistry and Education 74: 391–392.

Marshall, S. 2001. Reference management software: it’s your choice.Technical Computing 22: 16.

Szabo, A. and Hastings, N. 2000. Using IT in the undergraduate class-room: should we replace the blackboard with PowerPoint? Computersand Education 35: 175–187.

Note also the change in the sequence of the references to ensure thatthey are in alphabetical order.

For further exercises, see:http://www.ucc.ie/research/stars/referencing.html

References

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References 187

academic community 27–9, academic discourse 28, 116, 151–4,

168academic standards (for PhD) 11–13;

see also examination processachievable see manageabilityactivity trap 63adaptive management: description of

74–7; explanation of need for63–4

appeals 176appointment of examiners 177authorship 141–3: disputes 142; see

also Vancouver protocol

back-up (copies) 70budget (financial) 55–6

career development 8, 22, 23–9,170–1, 177–9

codes of practice 33–6communication: networking 27–9;

skills 26; with supervisor 40–7, 50;see also academic discourse,writing

completion: planning for 57, 59, 82;of thesis 116–17, 133–4

composure (for reflection) 71conferences: attendance 29, 34;

discussions at 28contribution to knowledge 14–18,

163, 170craft of research 1creative thinking 53–4

critical evaluation 14, 17–18, 71,97–101, 166, 169–171

critical friend (writing) 116criticism 114

deadlines 55–6, 81–2discipline (intellectual) 53–4dishonesty 84drafting see writing

editing see writingeducational benefits (of PhD) 23–9enjoyment 138, 155, 168ethical issues 69, 83–7examination process (for PhD): aims

of examination 157–8; criteria forassessment 161–7; discussion ofoutcomes (research findings)166–7; examination process158–9; examiners’ reports 159–60;examiners’ expectations 117–21;examining the thesis 117–19;expected standards 11–13;external examiner 158, 173;internal examiner 158, 173; seealso examination results, viva

examination results (grades) 175

feasibility see manageabilityfeedback: from co-authors 139, 144;

from examiners 168; from journalreferees 147, 149–53; fromnetworking 28; quality of 114–16;from supervisor 42–3

Index

first impressions (examiners’) 117–19freewriting 109–10

Gannt chart 80, 83goals see objectives‘good enough’ 116–17

health and safety 69

independence 13–14, 158, 163–4induction 1informal discussions 28

joint supervision 49–50journals: evaluation of articles 97–9,

evaluation of manuscripts 145–7;examples of referees’ criticisms148–53; see also authorship,publishing

knowledge: gaps in 91; new 9;uncertain 7; see also contributionto knowledge

learning from mistakes 1literature review: aims and scope

89–92, 164; common problems103; importance of evaluation 90,97–101; objectives 92–3; revising102–3; structure 101

major revision (grade) 175–6manageability 9, 20, 53–4, 62, 64–6,

67; feasibility 55–6, 70–3meetings 41–7: formal meetings 45–6;

informal meetings 44–5;preparation for 46–7

methodology 15–17, 62, 165, 169–70minor revision (grade) 175–6misconduct 85–6motivation 10, 62MPhil 12, 175

negligence 85–6networking 26, 27–9, 39

objectives: defining 56, 60, 65–8; ofliterature review 92–3; SMART65; see also activity trap

oral examination see vivaoriginality 14, 18–21, 163–4, 180–1over-estimating (requirements of

PhD) 9, 32

peer review process 145–153:assessment criteria commonlyused by referees 145–7; examplesof referees’ criticisms 148;examples of referees’ reports149–153; responding to referees’criticisms 153–4; see alsoauthorship, publishing yourresearch

perfectionism 116plagiarism 86planning: activity trap 63; advantages

of 61–2; coping withunpredictability 63–4, 74–7;detailed planning 75–7; outlineplanning 75–7; resources 78–81;time schedules and budgets 70–4; see also adaptivemanagement, completion, projectmanagement

professional development see careerdevelopment

professional doctorate 177–8progress: communicating lack of 44;

monitoring of 57, 59, 61, 82–3;and supervision 34–5, 40–1; seealso activity trap

project management: basic principlesand terminology 55–7;deliverables 56, 59, 67; deviationfrom plan 82–3; execution of tasks56–8; monitoring progress 57–9,82–3; see also adaptivemanagement, completion,planning

proofreading 132–3publishing your research: benefits of

137–8; choosing a journal 139–41;impact factors 140; ‘in press’ 155;lead author’s responsibilities 139;‘minimum publishable units’140–1; offprints 155; ‘publish orperish’ 140–1; rejection 147–8;submission of manuscripts 144; see

Index 189

also authorship, peer reviewprocess, suitability for publication

rastrology 21record-keeping: references 97; ideas

108; meetings 42–4; see alsoback-up

referees’ reports (journal publishing)see peer review process

references: cataloguing 97;presentation in thesis 129–33

relationship diagrams 93–7research design 67, 169; see also

methodology, research qualityresearch quality 1, 8, 22–3, 87: and

creativity 53–4; evaluation criteria99; ‘good enough’ 116–17; journalassessment criteria 145–147; andpublication 22–3, 137–8, 140;quality of submitted thesis 133–4,161–7; quality of writing in thesis117–21; and relationship withproject deadlines 55–6, 61, 82–3;writing as an aid to developquality 107; see also methodology,writing

research questions: doctoral nature of14–15; identifying 91, 164–5, 169

research skills see transferable skillsresources 78, 81responsibilities: of student 35; of

supervisor 33–4responsible conduct in research 83–7revising see writingrisk: assessment of 60–1, 67–70;

associated with discovery 69;examples of 63–4; planning tocope with 64; of exceedingavailable time 70–3; see alsoadaptive management

SMART objectives 65students: nature of relationship with

supervisor 36–7; responsibilities35–6

structure and presentation (of writtenthesis) 117–29, 162–3: assistingthe reader 119–20; forecasting125; institutional formatting

requirements 122; signalling126–7; signposting 127;summarising 126; typography123–5;

suitability for publication 14, 22–3,137

supervisor: changing 51; improvingcommunication 40–3; limits toassistance 40; meetings with 43–7,66; problems with 48–51;responsibilities of 33–4; see alsosupervisory practices

supervisory practices: balancing 38;critiquing 38–9; foreseeing 38,guiding 13, 33–4, 39; informing39, timing 38, see also feedback

theory 101–2: as criterion forevaluating research 99; andexpected standard of thesis 14–15,71, 158, 162, 164–6, 169

time: budgets and scheduling 71–4;limited for supervisor 41; andrelationship with research quality55–6, 61, 82–3; as resource 55

transferable skills 24–7, 177–8

uncertainty (planning for) 8; see alsoadaptive management, risk

under-estimating (requirements ofPhD) 9, 32, 71, 73

Vancouver protocol 142–3virus protection 70viva (oral examination): aims 168;

appeals 176; borderline cases 161,168; expert discussion 168;examples of questions 168–171,174; general advice 173–4; see alsoexamination process

writing: characteristics of productivewriters 107–8; completion116–17, 133–34; drafting 109–10;freewriting 109–10; globalstructure 112–14; grammar127–29; improving your 128–9;planning your writing 108; processof writing 105–16; revising and

190 Index

editing 110–114; forunderstanding 106–7; variety ofrevision practices 111–12; see also

feedback, referencing, structureand presentation

writing for understanding 106–7

Index 191

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Finn 2005 Getting a PhD

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